


nox ruit

by MidwesternDuchess



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU, DCU (Comics)
Genre: DC has never done anything cool with Helena Wayne so fuck y'all she's mine now, Gen, and a shitty twenty-something trying to fix her Whole Ass life, anyway, come along kids this is gonna be a ride and a fucking half, hope y'all like batfam shenanigans, major character death just bc in Earth-2 everyone is McFuckin Dead, nobody in this fic dies though I pinky promise, uhhhhh the fan AU of a canon AU?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-03
Updated: 2019-03-17
Packaged: 2019-06-21 02:31:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 30,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15547641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MidwesternDuchess/pseuds/MidwesternDuchess
Summary: “I am at the end of my father’s bloodline / A legacy on its deathbed” -Ashe Vernon(Helena Wayne is stranded in a parallel Gotham—one where her parents are alive, she was never born, and there are quite a few more bats than she remembers. AU.)





	1. one

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "...and I am out with lanterns, looking for myself." -Emily Dickinson
> 
>  
> 
> _(The daughter of Batman and Catwoman is lost in a place both exactly like she remembers, and yet different in every way.)_

There are a handful of hereditary traits in the Wayne bloodline.

Height, for one—at twenty-one, Helena doubts she has any growth spurts left in her, but she already stands at a respectable five feet, nine inches. It's dwarfed by the looming presence of her father's form, but in a pair of dangerous heels, Helena can split the difference.

Blue eyes are another. The opaque lenses in Helena's old domino mask had not only offered her infrared and nightvision, but concealed arguably one of her most recognizable features—irises to shame a diamond's own blue.

 _"_ _Like a pair of stolen sapphires,"_ Mother used to joke, ruffling her hair fondly, and Father would snort from his desk, not even looking up from his paperwork to quip back, _"Why do they have to be_ _ **stolen**_ _, Selina?"_

The list goes on—slightly upturned nose, sharp jawline, high cheekbones, deathly pale skin that Mother's darker complexion had overruled. There is undoubtedly a Wayne _look,_ and Helena fits it to a T.

But beyond the physical, there is a unifying trait passed down from generation to generation in the Wayne family—unseen but no less potent—and that is the unique ability to get mixed up in the most fucking ridiculous, _stupid_ shitshows known to mankind.

Such as the one she's in now.

Helena loiters like a ghost in the shadows of an alleyway, one hand on the curve of her crossbow, an annoyed cut to her jaw as she tries to figure out where the _fuck_ she is.

She knows where the fuck she's _supposed_ to be—Apokolips, the hellish, high-tech industrial wasteland that Darkseid rules over. Since his invasion of her home—since the death of her parents and near-every member of the Justice League—Helena has been working nonstop to find a way to take the fight to _him._ If she can find a way to lure Darkseid back to his godforsaken planet, she has the power to _keep_ him there.

Well, she _thinks_ she does, anyway. Constantine and Zatanna had sworn up and down that the little plan they'd hatched would _totally work, we swear_ but Helena tends to take up Father's point of view when it comes to magic and those who use it, and that point of view is miles and miles of mistrust.

Then Darkseid had wiped out a quarter of the people living in Old Gotham with a sweep of his hand, and Helena had gotten on board with the pair's shaky-at-best plan pretty fucking quick.

But none of that explains why she's currently in an alley at what—by her estimation—is ass o' clock at night. She leans back against the graffiti-laden brick, finally sliding her weapon back in its holster. As big a fan as she is of problems that can be solved with a crossbow bolt, she knows that's not what she's faced with now.

Her instinct is to say she's still in Gotham—that the interdimensional transportation method that had been given the _ungodly_ unfortunate name of _Boom Tube_ —had failed. Their plan failed. _She_ failed.

And while Helena Wayne is usually first in line when it comes to blaming Helena Wayne, even she feels the need to take a breath. Give herself space—perspective. She can handle this—she's the goddamn _Huntress._

Even _thinking_ the name of her chosen mantle has her standing up a little straighter.

So she's not in Apokolips—fine. That much is obvious. But she's still _somewhere_ and despite the odd sense of familiarity granted by this dingy back alley, she knows she's _not_ in Gotham. She can't be. Nights there have been different ever since Darkseid came—and Helena knows in her _bones_ that genocidal alien monstrosity isn't anywhere near her.

Taking a breath, Helena pushes off the wall, easing out of the shadows and feeling more like Father with every step. When she'd run with him as Robin, she'd been so damn _chipper_ about the whole thing—so bright and shining and eager to please. She used to love Gotham's nights, sprinting across rooftops flanked by her parents, utterly unconquerable.

And then dawn never broke, and night lagged and loitered until Helena quite forgot what daybreak looked like. Her parents passed like so many others, and the mantle of Robin faded with them, leaving Helena behind to gather up the ashes and from them fashion the Huntress—a dark, distorted reflection of herself left lingering in her father's footsteps.

Still, she moves out of the alley, forcibly reminding herself that she _isn't_ Batman as she begins to carefully pick her way along the street the alleyway empties into. The familiarity is blinding—everywhere she looks reminds her of Gotham, and it only frustrates her further as she continues along, boots scuffing along cracked concrete.

She wonders if homesickness is clouding her judgment, but she can't _really_ be homesick for a place she was in not five minutes ago, right? Besides, it _looks_ like Gotham—the feeling is just off.

She suddenly goes very still.

_Has she gone back in time?_

The thought draws mixed emotions. On the one hand—elation. Gotham before Darkseid is all she's ever wanted and exactly what she's never allowed herself to pine for—an impossibility impossibly out of reach.

Her hope—in typical Wayne fashion—quickly falls apart, reassembling itself into doubt and scrutiny. Stranger things have happened, it's true, but possibility is not probability. Just because it _can_ happen doesn't mean it _has_. Members of the Justice League have dabbled with time before, but those were very precise instances prompted by very precise circumstances. One does not just _stumble_ ten years into the past.

She hears footfalls far before she suspects the owners of those footfalls thinks she does, and coolly holds her place, tilting her head to the side just enough to sharpen her hearing.

Two sets, two figures. One lighter on their feet than the other. Low, anxious chatter shared between them. Helena holds her breath, listening.

"Hey!" a rough, reedy voice calls. "What the fuck you doin' over there?"

Helena subtly shifts her weight, evening out the distribution, preparing to move in any direction.

"Listen, this is our turf, alright?" a high voice—rather youthful as well. Helena frowns. "If you wanted in, you shoulda been here when they were carvin' it up months ago."

A gun cocks, and Helena narrows her eyes.

She may not know exactly where she is, but she's under no illusions as to who she is, or what her purpose in this life is.

She throws herself into a back handspring, twisting midair and kicking out with her leg at the peak of her arc with a satisfying _crunch_ from the heel of her boot as the woman's face snaps sideways, jaw thoroughly broken.

Helena's landing—spectacular as it is—lasts only a moment before she's rolling away as the man's gun cracks twice, splintering the concrete where she'd been a moment before.

Batman typically fought with batarangs. Catwoman favored the whip.

Their daughter had taken to neither of them.

Her hand-crossbow is drawn in a moment and before the man can reorient his shot, Helena's taken hers.

Two bolts—one for his wrist, one for his shoulder—and the man rears away from her with a howl of pain, dropping the gun in favor of curling in on himself, cradling his wounded arm as he dissolves into explicit babbling, eyes wide with pain and shock.

Helena dives forward to catch the falling weapon—her first night patrolling as Robin she'd let a gun drop and it'd discharged at a _civilian—_ and turns the maneuver into a somersault, using her momentum to throw herself forward and knock the man to the ground, effectively pinning him beneath her, forcing him to look down the barrel of the gun he'd held on her the last time he'd blinked.

She offers a jaunty smile as she settles astride him, adrenaline making her feel like a bit of a shit, as it always does.

"First time getting hit with a crossbow bolt?" she asks pleasantly, deftly disassembling the gun and throwing the guts of it off to the side, disinterested. She notes that his eyes have drifted away from her face to settle on something over her shoulder, and she arches an eyebrow.

Helena lifts her crossbow and—without looking—fires off another bolt directly behind her. The woman with a busted jaw goes down hard in a flurry of curses as the shot hits her just above the left knee.

She holsters the crossbow and notes the man's attention is _most definitely_ back on her. "You were saying?" she asks, blowing an errant black curl out of her eyes with a quick huff.

His chest is still heaving, and Helena accidentally-on-purpose shifts forward, planting her hands on both of his shoulders and _maybe_ applying a bit more pressure than needed on the one with ten inches of razor-sharp aluminum sticking out of it. He hisses with pain and she smirks.

 _"_ _Ow,_ yes, okay? _Yes_. Who the fuck—a _crossbow?_ Really? What the _fuck?"_

"Effective, you have to admit," she tells him conversationally.

"Who the fuck are you then?" he snarls at her, remarkably aggressive considering the position he's in. "Huh? You don't have a goddamn _bat_ on your chest so you're—what?" His eyes sweep her uniform, taking in her mask, utility belt, and the stark white cross that almost burns against the pitch of her suit. "Fuckin' _cross girl?"_

Helena's eyebrow climbs higher as she digests this information.

One: Batman—or some masked vigilante with an aforementioned _goddamn bat_ on their chest—exists in this place she's in now.

Two: His inability to identify her means that for whatever reason, _Huntress_ does _not_ exist in this place she's in now.

Three: Criminals still have abysmal imaginations. _Cross girl?_ _ **Really?**_

Still, she has a situation to settle before she tries to solve anything else, and looks around for something to restrain her would-be gunman with. When a quick sweep of her surroundings leaves her empty-handed, she just sighs, leveling a look at him.

"Look, we're in Gotham, right?" she blurts out.

A beat of silence follows her question, and Helena grits her teeth. There were more elegant, clever ways to go about solving that particular mystery, probably.

He pulls a face. "Are you serious? Of course we're—where the hell else would we be?" He squints at her then. "What are you, patrolling _drunk?_ Is that why you forgot your bat? Huh? Grabbed the wrong Halloween costume?"

Helena rolls her eyes, flexing her fingers where she grips the man's shoulders and drawing a low string of _"owowowowow ok **-ay,"** _ from him as she does.

"I'm going to leave you and your friend here for the GCPD to find," she tells him, eyebrow still lifted seriously. "And I'm going to leave my crossbow bolts, because the alternative is a bit messier than what I'm in the mood for right now. But if you make a break for it, the next one's going ten inches deep right _here."_

She taps him lightly between the eyes. He flinches.

"Good, now that that's settled." Helena flashes another cheery smile as she swings off of him, allowing all of her weight to bear down on his gut for one moment and smirking as the air is forced from his lungs in a strangled wheeze before rising fluidly to her feet.

She runs a gloved hand through her hair to settle her curls, idly tossing her gaze around as she decides her next move.

"Well, who are you then?"

Helena freezes, looking back over her shoulder. The man hasn't moved—because he can't or because he won't, she can't quite tell—and he glares up at her with all the indignity he can muster.

Considering the events of the last three-and-a-half minutes, he can muster quite a bit.

Helena peers down at him. "Pardon?"

He gestures at her profile with his good arm. "Your name, you masked jackass. Or are you leavin' it up to me? Because I'm _more_ than happy to—"

"Huntress." She cuts him off coolly and holsters her crossbow. "My name is Huntress."

"Never heard of ya," pipes up the woman from a few feet away, words jumbled due to her busted jaw. Helena throws her an annoyed glance and sees she's hauled herself up to sit against they alley wall, content to wait for the GCPD to roll up, apparently.

"Well then, I'll rent out some fucking billboards next time, alright?" Helena snaps back.

"I liked Cross Girl better, to be honest," the man tells her, drawing Helena's gaze again. He shifts on the ground, preparing to settle in. Clearly, this is not the first time they've been apprehended and told to wait for the police. He nods helpfully to her suit. "Suits your costume better, too." He mimes the sign of the cross in the air, like some kind of ragged, back alley Pope.

Helena smiles back tightly. She's in hell. The Boom Tube took her to fucking hell. Unbelievable.

"I'll take it under advisement," she tells him stiffly.

She leaves the pair to their own devices—after convincing herself that shooting him again would be a waste of a crossbow bolt—and slinks off to ponder her situation.

She isn't in hell, as charming a thought as that might be. Gotham isn't hell to her—it couldn't possibly be. Even _her_ Gotham, the one under Darkseid's thumb, is still where she wants to be, above anywhere else. She loves Gotham more than anything else—can't even picture her city without herself in it.

So why did neither of those delinquents recognize her?

Maybe the Helena of this Gotham never became Huntress? That makes sense, actually. She took up that mantle because her parents had been killed and she'd needed a new identity—she couldn't be Robin if Batman was dead.

So, if _this_ version of her never became Huntress, then _this_ version of Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle-Wayne must still be alive, meaning she's still—

A _whisper_ —the softest hiss of leather-on-concrete—has Helena whirling around, crossbow drawn, lips pulling back in a snarl at whoever has the goddamn _nerve_ to try and sneak up on someone they _just watched_ take down an armed criminal with hardly any _effort—_

Helena's eyes go wide behind her mask. _What the_ _ **fuck—**_

A boy stands before her—and she truly does mean _boy._ She can't see him too clearly—his features are cast into shadow by the hood of his cloak, and a domino mask guards his eyes—but it's obvious he clears five feet by the _narrowest_ of margins

Her eyes rove over his suit—familiar shades of scarlet, gold, and emerald—and settle on the patch over his heart that bears a capital _R_.

Helena's world goes sideways.

Robin. Holy _shit._

Helena can only stare—crossbow still trained on him, though she doubts she could muster enough brainpower to make her finger pull the trigger.

A boy. A boy in the middle of this maybe-Gotham, in the Robin uniform. No—in _her_ Robin uniform.

Helena's cold shock melts to white-hot anger in a _moment._

"Why are you dressed like Robin?" she snaps, taking a step forward and milking her height for all it's worth and more as she looms over him. She's grown to be so much like her father—probably too much, if she's being wholly honest with herself—but with some _boy_ wearing _her goddamn uniform_ she's not exactly worried about that right now.

He sneers at that, and she watches—stares, really, Wonder Woman herself could come waltzing in from stage fucking left and Helena's not sure she'd be inclined to redirect her gaze—as his hand disappears behind his back to reach for—

 _I'm sorry, is that a fucking_ _**sword?** _

"Because I _am_ Robin."

Helena is a woman who has _seen shit—_ she watched her mother die in her father's arms, then watched her father die in her _own_ arms. She'd seen Darkseid march into Gotham—her city, her _home_ —and kill sixty-odd civilians in a heartbeat. She's been locked in Arkham Asylum, pursued through The Narrows, beaten within an inch of her life in the Burnley District. She's been witness to countless assassinations, deadly explosions, acts of terrorism—for god's sake, she had a ringside seat to the death of fucking _Superman._

And yet— _and_ _ **yet**_ _—_ the cruelty that coats this boy's simple sentence gives even _her_ pause.

Helena's mouth is bursting to speak but her mind is absolutely blank. She is _completely_ thrown by the course of events that have transpired and doesn't quite know what to do about it _._

She works her jaw for a moment, sizing this—her mind flinches to even think it— _Robin_ up as she tries to figure out how to salvage the situation.

"And you are?"

His voice is totally void of any kind of Gotham accent—not the arch lilt of the Diamond Distract or the coarse drawl of Crime Alley. It makes Helena frown.

"I'm Huntress," she tells him shortly—because _fuck_ she has to say _something_ —and for once she's wishing her chosen costume offered a bit more identity protection. It never mattered in _her_ Gotham—a place where Batman was dead and the world teetered on the brink of annihilation—the line between Helena Wayne and The Huntress hardly existed. No one cared if Bruce Wayne's orphaned daughter prowled around at night with a crossbow—they only cared if they survived to see morning.

And so few did, these days.

But now, with this boy staring at her incredulously from behind his domino mask—Helena has to catch herself from thinking _her_ domino mask—she longs for a cowl to vanish beneath. She settles for sinking deeper into her cloak, allowing the garment to swallow her form as she regards him coolly.

"You seem dissatisfied," she notes, arching an eyebrow at the boy's continued silence. His uniform isn't quite like hers had been, she notes, unsure how that information makes her feel. She'd never been allowed a hood, and she _certainly_ never carried a _sword._

 _"_ _Tt,"_ the boy scoffs. "I suppose that's not the _worst_ moniker I've ever heard."

Helena's eyebrows climb—if possible—higher. Because one: _rude._ So rude. Unbelievably rude. Two: what _ten_ year-old has the word _moniker_ in their lexicon?

"I wouldn't throw stones, _Boy Wonder,"_ Helena replies icily, because she has no idea who this tiny bastard is—a younger Dick Grayson? No _way_ —but she knows it's insulting and she's banking on there being enough similarities between the Gotham she knows and the Gotham she's in for it to sting properly.

His expression sours _magnificently._ Helena tries not to feel too proud. He _is_ still a ten year-old.

"I'm no _Boy Wonder,"_ he growls at her—yes, _growls_ , sounding more like a dog than Helena thinks some _actual_ dogs do—and his words are accented by the shriek of his sword as he starts to draw it again.

"Hey hey hey," Helena says quickly, stepping forward, crowding him, hands up in surrender. She swears his _hackles_ raise, like some kind of alley cat, teeth bared in a sneer at her approach. "Easy, Robin—" she gives herself a gold star for not vomiting at calling him as such "—just…no swords, okay? I can't believe I have to say that, but _no swords._ We're not enemies."

He looks _utterly_ unconvinced.

"Oh?" His tiny little ten year-old fingers are still wrapped very firmly around the hilt of his sword, but he's no longer actively drawing it, so Helena scrambles to continue.

"We're not," she insists. "You're _Robin._ You—" she breaks off, suddenly. Because holy shit—what if she's wrong? What if this is some kind of parallel universe? Where up is down and right is left and Robins carry swords and—and fuckin' _kabob_ people or whatever it is people with sword do. Helena wouldn't know. The weirdest weapon she's ever seen is Aquaman's trident and she's willing to give him a pass on that one.

"You're—you're one of the good guys," she forces out, desperately hoping he's not about to, like, scoff at her words and slice her hand off, even though she's kind of totally prepared for that to be his next move. Her fingers itch to reach for her crossbow, but she resists.

Robin can't be bad. He _can't_ be.

Batman and Robin are a team—the epitome of partnership. And not just because when she'd been Robin, it'd been a father-daughter deal. Even when _Dick_ had donned the uniform, it was like a switch was thrown. A connection that ran bone deep. She and Mother had always been inseparable, but every time she threw on that cape, she was wholly and singularly Batman's partner. That's how it worked.

If _Robin's_ evil, that would mean—it would mean _Batman—_

Helena sets her jaw. Squares her shoulders.

Nope. Not evil. She's not buying it.

"You're good," she tells him firmly. "And I'm good too. So that makes us…" she trails off, half-forgetting where she was even going with this.

"…not enemies?" he prompts, voice absolutely _dripping_ doubt.

Helena nods stiffly, trying to convince herself she circumvented a fight by using diplomacy instead of acknowledging the fact that a child wearing her old uniform was a just a moment away from running her through with a sword.

Silence falls between them—it's awkward and tense. Helena is about to turn and leave just to break it, when the boy speaks.

"Batman isn't very fond of civilians trying to join in," he tells her, and _god_ she wishes he'd choke on that harsh, posh lilt to his voice. _He's only ten, Lena,_ she reminds herself, **_again._**

"Well, _I'm_ not very fond of children carrying swords," she snaps back because yeah, she hasn't really forgotten that he's _still actively drawing one of those._ "What's Batman think about that?"

She hadn't _really_ meant to say it—she was actually trying to avoid the b-word, if she's being wholly honest with herself—but to her surprise, Robin looks away, a muscle ticking in his jaw. _Curious._

"You still shouldn't be out here," he insists, turning his glare upon her once again. "You could get hurt."

Helena cocks a brow at the peeved disinterest he speaks with. Yeah, he sounds like a concerned superhero alright. Robin, her _ass._

"Show me your permit to prowl around at night in a costume and I'll show you mine," Helena retorts, annoyed.

He snorts at that—she's not sure if it's in humor or irritation, but given all she's gleaned from this boy in the delightful ten minutes she's shared his company, she's betting on the latter.

But he finally releases his sword, and Helena lets loose a soft sigh of relief at that.

It's not that she _wouldn't_ have fought him. It's not even that she thinks she _couldn't_ have. But goddamn—show her someone who'd willingly engage in a _sword fight_ in the _twenty-first_ fuckin' century and she'll happily pass her mantle on to them.

Still. While she's glad there are no sword fights on the horizon, she knows she's overstayed her welcome here, and she feels her gaze playing across the surrounding rooftops, searching.

Wherever Robin appears, Batman is soon to follow.

She still has fuck-all idea where she is, but _that's_ as good as a law of physics. She needs to move. _Now._

"Well, not that this hasn't been _enchanting,"_ Helena drawls, taking a step back and watching him closely for a reaction. Mostly his sword hand. Or what she assumes is his sword hand, anyway. He's probably ambidextrous, the little shit. "But it's time for me to go. _So."_

Holding his gaze for just a moment longer—the boy radiates pain and anger in a way that would make her heart ache for him if it weren't for the fact that he's baring _her_ sigil on his chest—before she turns around with the casual grace lent to her by the Kyle side of her lineage, carelessly giving him her back.

She hopes he sees the simple action for what it is—a silent declaration. An allegorical middle finger.

_Yeah, I'll turn my back on you, Boy Wonder. And I won't fuckin' think twice about it._

She hears that " _Tt"_ noise again, harsh with anger, and smirks to herself. Good. So they're all on the same page.

"I _will_ find you again." It sounds like a threat.

"Not unless I want you to," she returns, voice cold with confidence as she draws her grappling gun.

She can feel his gaze on her as she vanishes into the night, scaling a nearby building and hunkering down in the shadows among a set of gargoyles that guard the overhang. She waits until the icy sharpness of the boy's eyes leaves her, and peers over the edge of the roof to catch the gleam of his cape's golden lining as he too takes his leave.

Helena sighs, leaning sideways up against one of the gargoyles and letting her feet dangle off the side of the ledge. She props her elbow up on the head of the one beside her, turning to give a sidelong look of exasperation to its neighboring statue.

"This _sucks,"_ she tells it conversationally.

The gargoyle continues to sneer malevolently down at the city streets below. Helena just sighs again as she tries to figure out what the fuck she's going to do.

Her first instinct—unbridled and immediate—is _home._ Wayne Manor. That's where she'll find answers.

But it's also where—statistically speaking—roughly sixty percent of her problems are probably lurking, not to mention the fact that after meeting this Gotham's Robin, she's not particularly keen on meeting its Batman.

 _Very clever,_ her subconscious coos sardonically. _Call him_ _ **Batman**_ _instead of_ _ **Father**_ _. That'll keep you emotionally stable._

Gritting her teeth, Helena rises to her feet, giving the gargoyle an affectionate pat on the head before smoothly descending back down to the streets below, making it a point to stick to the shadows. She'd talked a big game with Robin, but if he's actively looking for her, she's at least not going to make it easy for him.

She wanders through the city, finding that this Gotham is as rife with crime and violence as hers is as she breaks up two muggings, a robbery, and a violent domestic dispute. Those she rescues all have the same reaction, she notes—extreme gratitude, followed by slight confusion when their eyes sweep over her suit and apparently don't like what they see there. Or rather—what they _don't_ see.

 _You don't have a goddamn_ _ **bat**_ _on your chest,_ the man back in the alley had snarled.

Helena puts it out of her mind. One thing at a time.

She finally emerges into the Diamond District—home to Gotham's wealthiest citizens and most upscale businesses—squinting slightly as she finds herself blinded by a gargantuan neon sign that tops the several-stories tall building across the street from her, its wattage impressive enough to cut through Gotham's signature gloom.

Helena pauses, disoriented for a moment. The Gotham she'd just drifted through had been fairly familiar—she'd passed under the shadow of Old Gotham's Clocktower, ghosted through the abandoned subway beneath the Burnley District, listened to the lull of the ocean at Midtown Pier, and even scaled an apartment complex to get an eyeful of Arkham Asylum across the Gotham River.

She knows the Diamond District as well as any part of Gotham, but as she scans the building, she finds herself at a loss. Granted, most of the buildings of _her_ Gotham have long-since been destroyed or abandoned, and this Gotham is far from _identical_ to hers, but something like this ought to have stuck with her.

Brushing hair out of her eyes, Helena tilts her head back to see what it's advertising—maybe the name will tip something back into place.

 **WAYNE ENTERPRISES** stares down at her. Helena works her jaw, rocking back on her heels.

Well, that certainly tracks with the kind of day she's having, now doesn't it?

Quickly lowering her eyes, Helena stalks out of the sign's electric-blue glow and sinks back into the familiar comfort of the city's shadowy fog. She's going to sew a hood to disappear beneath onto her cloak before this shit show is over. She just knows it.

Still, unsettling as the sign is, it's information she can't afford to waste. The Wayne Enterprises of her Gotham was undoubtedly impressive, but on a much smaller scale. Still easily the largest and most successful business in the city, but that _thing_ she'd just seen was positively _monstrous._

For the first time, Helena doubts the presence of her Mother here. Batman exists, so Bruce Wayne is here in one capacity or another, but if her mother _is_ married to her father in whatever world she's in, it hasn't been for very long—Selina Kyle-Wayne wouldn't let something like _that_ stand for a _second,_ thank you very much.

Thankful for the late hour and absence of pedestrians, Helena steps out of the shadows a good distance away from the looming Wayne Enterprises to approach a trashcan. She paws through it, pushing aside a handful of coffee cups, receipts, a busted umbrella and other miscellaneous items before coming across what she'd been hoping to find.

Sidestepping to better situate herself beneath a nearby streetlight, Helena extracts the item of interest and tries her best to mop off the coffee it's been soaking in as she scans the back of the magazine, which includes some credits for the publication in her hands: The Gotham Globe.

Tabloids. Possibly the worst source of actual information, but bursting with the kind of news she needs right now. She's Bruce Wayne's goddamn daughter—her face hasn't left the front page of a gossip magazine in all her twenty-one years. If she exists in this Gotham, she'll be here.

Flipping the magazine over, Helena's eyes skim the cover and she very nearly hurls into the conveniently located trashcan.

Bruce Wayne stares back at her. He looks exactly as she remembers him—looks exactly like _her._

Tall. Piercing blue eyes. Pitch black hair. Sharp, regal features.

Helena swallows and tastes bile.

She takes a moment. Then another. Her eyes track a stray cat as it scampers about nearby, waiting for sense and rationale to return to her. Her hands shake where she holds the publication and she pretends not to notice.

The cat seems to sense her gaze, and its eyes snap to her in the gloom of the night, wary, before vanishing into the darkness.

Helena forces herself to look back at the cover.

 _Inside the glamor of the annual Wayne Gala_ the headline blares, which pulls a frown from Helena, because she's never heard of a fucking _Wayne Gala_ , especially one that occurs on a yearly basis. It sounds like something she and Mother would invent and then gush about in horribly posh accents when they got bored at whatever social event they'd been forced to attend this time, and Father would give them his _I'm amused but you still need to knock off your shit_ look.

Chewing her lip, Helena flips to the suggested page, and a glossy, full-page photo falls open in her hands.

Helena can only stare.

 _Gotham's Princes_ is the title, apparently, and is it ever an eyeful and a half.

Her father sits, flanked on all sides by… _boys._ Helena squints. No, seriously, who the fuck are these guys?

The caption very helpfully names them for her, and her eyes drift over their faces, committing them to memory.

 _Timothy Drake-Wayne_ is listed first—he stands to the left of her father, looking roughly her age, perhaps a bit younger. At a glance, he could pass for a Wayne, but Helena can see in his face he's not. Features too soft, frame too willowy, smile too unpolished. He's no more a Wayne than she is a Kent, but he exudes the confidence to at least play the part. The last name snags her— _Drake-Wayne—_ but she tries not to dwell on it or the roughly one hundred and six meanings it could have.

 _Richard Grayson_ is next, and despite everything, Helena smiles softly. He's younger in this timeline—older than her, she guesses, but a few decades off from the somewhat harried ex-Robin of her Gotham. He's taken up post over her father's right shoulder, all lean muscle and effortless finesse. He offers the camera a winning smile, and Helena can't resist the urge to smile back at her adoptive older brother. She'll take the familiarity, even if she knows it'll haunt her later.

 _Jason Todd_ looks just as tall as Dick and twice as sturdy, Helena notes when her gaze finally travels to him. He stands opposite Dick over her father's left shoulder—dark haired as the rest of them—with a curious swath of white curling through the pitch locks. The skin beneath his eyes is bruised dark with sleeplessness, and Helena tilts her head as she assesses his poor posture. If Timothy Drake-Wayne had been unpolished, this Jason Todd is downright _unrefined_. There's a look of self-assurance in his eyes though—just a spark—and it's enough to make Helena withhold judgment.

Last is _Damian Wayne,_ and Helena's eyebrow quirks as she stares down at what is possibly the angriest looking boy she's ever seen. He stands ramrod straight at her father's side, arms folded stiffly behind his back, giving the camera a severe look. His young features clash terribly with the stern cut to his jaw, and she can't decide if his perfectly fitted suit looks like something he'd wear to First Communion or a court case. Helena's eyes get caught on his last name: _Wayne._ He must be a blood son—he looks almost as much a Wayne as she does. But what is he doing mixed in with all these interlopers? Why does he look so cruel?

And just who is his _mother?_

She very skillfully and pointlessly skips over her father's name, skimming the rest of the article for anything else that might lend itself as a clue. It's nothing but walls and walls of text overflowing with praise for the gala's signature opulence, gossip about which celebrities showed and which didn't, commentary about the boys' suits—

Helena curses under her breath, flipping ahead to scan for more pictures. All she finds are more images of her father, _Gotham's Princes_ —she rolls her eyes every time she reads the phrase—and one particularly artful shot of Wayne Manor that elicits so many emotions, Helena just snaps the magazine shut.

Nothing. No mention of a Helena Wayne. Or a Selina Kyle-Wayne, for that matter, which only winds Helena's anxiety tighter.

None of those boys had the Kyle _look,_ either—not even in passing, like she did. Damian and Jason could pass on skin color, but they lacked any of her mother's other telltale features—cheekbones sharp enough to cut a man, full lips prime for smiling and shit talking, eerily bright green eyes—

Helena catches herself, cursing lowly as she flips the magazine open, gaze flickering back to where Damian stands stiffly beside her father. His eyes are green. _Really_ fucking green.

She stares hard. Could it be? Could he _really_ be the son of Selina Kyle and Bruce Wayne? Her _brother?_ Was this Gotham's Helena Wayne swapped for Damian Wayne?

The thought unsteadies her at an uncomfortably intimate level—unseats her very sense of self.

Was she...not good enough?

Nope. _No._ Absolutely **_not._** Helena grits her teeth, tossing the gossip column back in the trash and pulling a mental E-brake. She has enough going on right now, she doesn't need to create more problems for herself. If anything, she's the only thing she can truly count on right now—the only trustworthy being in the bizarre, parallel Gotham.

She's Helena Martha Wayne—only child of Bruce and Selina Wayne, heiress to Wayne Enterprises, beloved daughter of Gotham, and the Huntress. Nothing—not a bunch of boys in fancy suits, not an enormous neon sign, and not a ten year-old asshole with a sword—can take that away from her.

Emboldened, if just for the moment, Helena turns her back of the sprawling sign of Wayne Enterprises and grapples back across the city, putting as much distance between herself and her _lack_ of self as she can.

Back in the familiarity of Old Gotham, Helena spares a moment to check in on the criminals she'd apprehended earlier. The alleyway is a bit more crowded than she'd left it—two uniformed GCPD officers are in the process of cuffing them, and as Helena skirts by on the rooftops, she catches snippets of the conversation.

"No, no, Officer, you aren't _listenin'._ It _wasn't_ Batman, it was the _Huntress._ Ain't that right, Marsha?"

Marsha gurgles something vaguely affirmative, and Helena steals a glance to see her jaw getting checked out by a paramedic.

The officer being addressed just scoffs. "Huntress, huh?" he drawls, using his free hand to open the rear door of his car. "That's a new one."

The man splays his cuffed hands as far as he can. _"Right?_ That's what I said!"

Helena watches as the two are piled in the back of the cop car before swinging across the street to the building she'd climbed earlier, smiling softly at the sight of the gargoyles.

"Hey boys," she greets them lamely, holstering her grappling gun. "Late, huh?"

She sighs, leaning against the statue and frowning moodily down at the streets of this _Gotham But Also Not Gotham_ she's found herself in.

She's alone, she's broke, and she didn't even bring her fucking _cellphone._

But still…Gotham. Some form of it, anyway. One where her father is apparently _not_ married to her mother and is instead the guardian of four boys. One of which may _actually_ be his son.

His son. Not daughter. Because she doesn't exist here.

Helena wonders idly if she's in some personal circle of hell. A world that's just enough like her old life—the life she'd _loved,_ the one before Darkseid—to make her bask in the familiarity, but so different in so many ways it makes her heart ache and her head spin.

A Gotham without Mother and Father—without them ever having existed together—isn't one Helena is interested in occupying, thank you very fucking much. Not to mention a Gotham she was never born in.

But fine. Fate thinks this is the worst it can throw at her? What a fucking _joke._

She spins on her heel sharply enough to make her cape flare out behind her—a needlessly dramatic move she'd unconsciously picked up from years of watching her father—and stalks across the rooftop, destination decided.

If she can't be Helena Wayne, she'll have to go to the place where Waynes go to die.

A light drizzle begins to fall as she steps off the ledge and drops down into the inky blackness below. For a moment, she just falls—gives herself up to the pull of gravity and lets the wind rip through her hair and her cloak—relishing in the brief sensation of weightlessness before she's firing her grappling gun and _swinging—_

Crime Alley rushes to meet her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so uh. I kinda really like Batman.
> 
> anyway, Helena Wayne is a canon character (though I wouldn't blame you for thinking she's an OC) who is the daughter of Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle from Earth-2, which is like DCU's parallel universe. this fic is kind of a take on the World's Finest comic run which featured Huntress and Power Girl in this exact scenario. Power Girl doesn't make the trip in my fic, because I'm going to be focusing more on the Batfam, but most of the bones of that original story are still in place.
> 
> hope it wasn't too confusing. and yes, if you were (somehow) unsure, that Robin she met was of course our own Damian Wayne. you'll need a fair amount if DC knowledge to get through most of this fic, I'm afraid, so if this isn't really your thing, that's totally fine—but maybe pass it on to someone who would like it?
> 
> ~~hi I'm Duch and I'm so scared to write fic for a new fandom holy shit oh my god~~
> 
> _Like this piece? Here’s my billboard!_
> 
> **[MORE WRITING](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MidwesternDuchess/works) **
> 
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> thanks for checking it out, feel free to drop me a line <3


	2. two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "But here’s the kingdom we call remembrance / with its thousand iron doors / through which I pass through so easily.” -Mary Oliver
> 
>  
> 
> _(A Wayne returns to Crime Alley, and the Hood makes himself known.)_

Helena had been born in Crime Alley.

That hadn't been the plan, apparently—well, it depended on who was telling the story, really, because _Father_ always said it hadn't been the plan and Mother had countered that _his_ plan didn't account for her giving birth three and a half weeks prematurely, so she'd gone and made her _own_ damn plans, Bruce Thomas Wayne, thank you _very_ much.

Plus, they hadn't been married at the time, which is something that pained her father every time it was brought up. Usually by Mother. With relish.

So, yeah. Crime Alley and Helena are old friends.

Father had forbidden her from venturing there when she was younger—before Dick had passed on the Robin mantle to her—but Mother was always soft on the place. Helena recalls many dreary Gotham nights spent clinging to Catwoman's back as they crept through the East End District, her Mother whispering stories and tales of her own youth as they silently ghosted around old buildings and down dark alleyways.

 _"_ _Respect, Helena,"_ she'd murmured. _"Treat this place with the respect it deserves, and it is no different than any other part of Gotham."_

Mother maintained an apartment in Crime Alley even after she'd married Bruce and moved in to the Manor. She'd always taken a particular interest in patrolling and protecting the East End, and apparently that was an argument that had been settled long before Helena came around, because Father never protested, though his mouth always tightened with dislike when Selina left to settle Crime Alley business.

When Darkseid came and her parents passed, Helena had taken to living out of her mother's old apartment, drawing whatever solace and serenity she could from the familiar nostalgia of the place.

Now, however, Helena gives the building a wide berth as she sticks to the fringes of the District, trying to melt into the darkness. It's a moot point—hiding from the very woman who _taught_ her how to hide is absolutely pointless, in her own opinion—but she can at least try. All she needs to perfect this already _wonderful_ evening is a run-in with Selina Kyle.

Helena catches herself, going still in the rain. Assuming, of course, Selina Kyle even _exists_ in this Gotham. She hadn't thought about that, to be honest, she just assumed the similarities between the two cities extended to their respective citizens. Bruce Wayne _has_ to be here because Bruce Wayne _is_ Gotham—and Selina Kyle is far from being much different. Catwoman kept pace with Batman at half the equipment and maybe a _sixteenth_ of the funding—outdistancing the Night with nothing more than a pair of night-vision goggles and a whip. In some parts of Gotham, Helena wagers Catwoman was more dearly loved than Batman, so how could she _not_ be here?

But if Helena herself is missing from this Gotham…whose to say she's the only one?

She lands on a rooftop, the roar of the rain drowning out any sound she might have made as she vanishes inside, slipping in through a busted window on the top floor. She doesn't know this exact building per se, but she has a good enough sense as to where she is to place herself at the lower end of Uptown Gotham—near the boundary line where Crime Alley begins, but flanked by plenty of territory to slink back into should she need to make a quick escape to Midtown or lower.

And, coincidentally, very very far from Selina Kyle's East End apartment.

The drizzle that began some twenty minutes back has picked up to a full-on downpour, and Helena laments her lack of a change of clothes as she stands sopping wet in the middle of the abandoned loft. Objectively, she knows if this Gotham is anything like _her_ Gotham—or rather, what her Gotham _used_ to be like—she can walk into a Wal-Mart looking like a drowned rat in full fucking Huntress gear and nobody will bat an eye, but it's the _principle_ of the thing.

Besides—she's still flat broke.

So she shelves that particular issue for now and moves back to the more pressing problem of an identity.

If Wayne Enterprises exists, there are bat-themed vigilantes, and the weather fucking sucks, then _this_ Gotham is close enough to _her_ Gotham for it to count as familiar territory. Home turf, even.

 _Yeah, think about_ _ **home,**_ _Lena,_ she chides herself. **_That's_** _a good plan._

She takes a stabilizing breath. Why her inner-monologues always sound traitorously like one of Mother's old lectures is something she'll never understand.

Still—Gotham. She knows Gotham. She _loves_ Gotham. She can survive in Gotham.

She just can't do it as Helena Wayne.

Especially if Helena Wayne doesn't _exist_ here.

Helena fishes a penlight out from the folds of her cloak and unbuckles her utility belt, crouching down in the puddle that's formed at her feet as she decides to see just how fucked she really is. Putting the flashlight in her teeth to free her hands, she empties the pouches, trying not to be discouraged at how quickly she sorts out all her available resources as she sits back on her heels to inspect the haul with a critical eye.

It's not much, truthfully—she'd packed for a showdown with Darkseid, not an undercover mission in parallel fucking Gotham—and tries to sigh around the flashlight clamped in her teeth.

A cryptographic sequencer, a handful of trackers, some batarangs, smoke pellets because drama is hereditary and she got double-doses from both her parents, a well-loved lockpick, her taser, an emergency stash of one hundred dollars she's so relieved to see she could cry, a spare hair tie because she loves herself, a few crossbow bolt heads tipped with fast-acting anesthesia, more line for her grappling gun, and a ring fit with a gemstone of kryptonite because god only knows when she's going to have to take down a fucking _Kryptonian._

Helena drums her fingers on her thighs. Right. So. On a scale of _one-to-fucked,_ she's looking pretty spectacularly fucked.

Still, the hundred dollars is an unexpected prize, and enough to allow Helena to reorient herself. She needs a plan—no, scratch that—she needs a _to-do_ list. She's nowhere near as analytical and systematic as Father was, but she's still lost without some semblance of structure, or some kind of goal to work towards. Mother preferred to play fast and loose with everything always, and was skilled enough to pull it off. Helena has no delusions about her ability to do the same—she'll stick to a goal-oriented checklist, thanks.

And her first stop is Wal-Mart.

Helena strips out of her armor, suit, and cloak, leaving her standing in the near-ruined loft in just her form-fitting, thermal-regulated, Kevlar-enforced undershirt and leggings—both soaked to the bone. She has no alternate footwear, so she keeps the combat boots and snags the hairband from her neat little pile on the ground to throw her waterlogged locks up into something hopefully resembling a ponytail.

Crouching down, Helena flicks out her cloak and spreads it over her small stash of supplies, watching as the dark fabric camouflages nicely against the pitch of the unlit room. It won't fool anyone who takes a second look, obviously—it's a fucking misshapen lump on the ground—but people very rarely have the time to take such second looks in Crime Alley, so she's confident her hidey-hole will remain undisturbed for the moment.

God bless the East End—she's about to walk into the nearest convenience store looking like a hot fucking mess with a hundred dollars cash just loose in her hand—and nobody is going to say a word.

She tries to take the stairs to play up her fledgling civilian identity but finds them completely shattered and unusable. Helena's mouth tightens with irritation—this whole building must be condemned. The positive is she's unlikely to be discovered, but the negative is it's going to take a fair amount of resources to make it livable, let alone _comfortable._

Resources Helena has absolutely no access to.

With a sigh, Helena leaps up to grab onto the crisscrossing support beams on the ceiling, pulling herself up and carefully monkey-bar'ing across the broken staircase to drop down a level lower, trusting her boots to absorb the impact. This place is absolute barebones, and Helena begins to wonder if it's condemned so much as it was simply never finished. She carefully works her way down five more floors, maneuvering around exposed piping, shards of glass, used needles. She's honestly shocked she doesn't come across a body. On the main floor, a huge hole for a window stands empty, letting in the rain and the wind with it.

Helena crosses the floor to inspect, mindful of weak patches that might give as she walks. Her brain starts spinning with calculations and measurements and ideas on how to fix this place up—she and her parents resorted and renovated tons of apartments back in her Gotham, both in and out of costume—but that was when Helena had a shiny silver Wayne Enterprises credit card in hand.

Trying not to think too hard about how disappointed Mother would be that she keeps finding herself road blocked by a lack of money, Helena dismisses the state of the building and exits. _Stop creating problems for yourself,_ she chants internally, ducking back into the downpour. _You've already got ten thousand fucking things that need to be solved._

East End's Wal-Mart is exactly where she remembers it being, and that both warms her with a sense of familiarity and sets her on edge—how can _she_ be the only thing missing?

Helena smiles at the door greeter, grabs a hand basket, and quickly collects the list she's been writing in her head: spare clothes, a baseball cap, bottled water, granola bars, a raincoat, a prepaid flip phone, a pair of tennis shoes, and a backpack.

She loiters at the jewelers' counter, scanning the cases for a wristwatch that won't put her over budget. After a few minutes of indecisiveness, an older gentleman working the counter approaches her, and Helena glances up to see him smiling kindly, if not a bit awkwardly.

"I don't mean to assume anything, miss," he tells her gently. "And you're welcome to stay here as long as you like, but we _do_ have a selection of watches just over there that are considerably cheaper." He nods over to the area in question, clearly trying to be as accommodating as possible. "They all serve the same purpose, I assure you."

Helena huffs out a laugh. He has a point.

"I appreciate it," she tells him genuinely. "Thanks."

And that's how a children's Scooby-Doo wristwatch gets added to Helena Wayne's Wal-Mart basket at one-thirty in the morning.

Her gaze plays over the gossip rags for sale in the check-out lane as she waits for the man in front of her to finish his purchase. The Wayne Family—and her father in particular—seem to be the prime subject of interest, and Helena frowns as she scans multiple covers that guess at his relationship status. He seems to be with a different woman in every image, and _none_ of them are Selina Kyle.

She tries not to be so bothered by it—she can't really be mad, _she_ doesn't even _exist_ here—but it's undeniably unsettling. She fights the queasy feeling by amusing herself with a few articles on Dick Grayson, who is apparently just as eligible a bachelor as Bruce Wayne is. She wonders how similar this Dick is from the one who would play with her endlessly in the Manor when Mother and Father went out for the night—either to bust heads or attend a gala, it was always a toss-up—when she was too young to accompany them. Her charming circus-boy brother, always quick with a smile and a joke.

Until Darkseid came, of course.

Helena replaces the magazine to the shelf, mood tanking at the thought. Dick was still alive when she'd left—he wouldn't put on a uniform again, no matter how much she begged him to, insisting he could do more good as a lawyer than as a bat—and they'd fought fiercely over it. He hadn't approved of _this_ plan either, and Helena grimaces as she recalls the curt, angry parting words they'd shared.

_"_ _Just like your_ _**father,** _ _Helena—how many more people have to die before you accept that this is beyond your capabilities?"_

_"_ _He was_ _**your** _ _father too, Dick. Or are you throwing away_ _**everything** _ _Bruce gave you?"_

"Miss?"

Helena jolts to attention to see the checkout lane is clear, and the clerk is waiting for her to step forward.

"Sorry, sorry," Helena mumbles, dumping her gathered items onto the belt and passing her basket to the worker, who looks her over carefully.

"You alright there?" the woman asks, sizing Helena up with a critical eye. "It's a rough world out there—can't lose your focus like that in a town like this."

Helena forces a weary smile. "Yeah, I know."

The hat goes on her head the moment she's out of the store. She isn't sure how good of a look Robin got at her, and needs to start putting as many layers between Helena Wayne and the Huntress as she can. A Gotham City University ball cap isn't really going to fool anyone, she knows, but it's a start. She pulls the weatherproof jacket she'd bought out of the bag too, and shrugs it on, just to try and ward off the chill the rain has brought. She has more than a few long, cold, hungry nights ahead of her, and Helena sighs at the thought.

She needs an ID—desperately—and a fake name and backstory to go with it. She struggles to recall the old undercover identities she'd developed back in her Gotham, but nothing comes clearly. She vaguely remembers posing as a bartender a few years before she even turned twenty-one to gain access to the Iceberg Lounge, and a time she'd impersonated an unhinged arsonist to get inside Arkham Asylum. Neither encounter had gone spectacularly—as Mother was always quick to point out, Waynes had too much pride to pretend to be someone else very well for very long.

The Asylum cover is out of the question—even if it hadn't almost gotten her killed the last time she'd used it, she has no reason or want to get close to that place—but the Iceberg Lounge isn't such a bad thought. Assuming—as always—the Penguin even exists here, and if he does, he still runs the upscale nightclub out of the Diamond District.

Her brain spins with ideas and questions—how deep would her cover have to go? It's not like the fucking Penguin is going to be picky about references, is he? Is the Lounge too obvious? Batman was known to show up there now and again looking for information—is she playing too close to home?

And of course, the questions she's been pointedly avoiding this entire time—how long will she be here? Has time stopped in her Gotham? Is this place even real? How did she even end up here, and how can she go back?

A movement out of the corner of her eye catches Helena's attention, and she glances sideways to see a figure approaching her out of the rain. She almost laughs—the Wal-Mart lady had tried to warn her not to get lost in her head while walking around the East End, and here she is anyway, probably about to beat the shit out of the world's unluckiest mugger. Or should she let him take her stuff and then track him down later as Huntress? God, civilian covers are so fucking complicated.

Then the figure passes under a street lamp, and a sharp burst of red light makes Helena stop and turn—watching the light strike the top of the figure's ruby-red helmet and making it gleam in the Gotham gloom.

Oh, this is a whole _barrel_ of bullshit Helena just does not have time for.

She stalls under the rain as the figure approaches her, trying to glean a few more details—when she audibly curses.

Because of course—in defiance of god and man and all things holy—the guy's got a fucking _bat_ on his chest—stark red against the black of his armor.

Helena's starting to understand the confusion of the man who'd called her cross girl— _everyone_ in this town walks around with Batman's signature seared over their hearts. She's the odd man out without one.

Which— _why?_ Helena doesn't exactly understand that. _Her_ Gotham had exactly two and a half masked vigilantes—Batman, Robin, and Catwoman; provided there was some kind of ancient artifact at stake and the newest episode of whatever garbage soap Mother was watching at the time wasn't on. Dick Grayson had been the first Robin, and Helena had replaced him when he married Barbara Gordon and retired from the mantle. Huntress hadn't been born until her parents had died—and at that point no one in Gotham gave a good goddamn about who was wearing what symbol.

So where are all these bats _coming_ from?

Helena debates just hauling off and leaving—if he has nothing better to do than menacingly follow civilians around in the rain, she'll break his fuckin' jaw, helmet or no helmet—but curiosity and a civilian identity she's too stubborn to blow literal _minutes_ after establishing how badly she needs one forces Helena to stick around.

Idly hoping bloodstained combat boots are _totally in_ with civilians, she steps forward to meet him head-on.

He's built—very built. Built enough that Helena doesn't actually fancy a fight with him. Not that she'd _lose_ —she's the fucking _Huntress_ , thank you very much—but she knows it'd be fairer than most of her fights tend to be.

His leather jacket sports a handful of bullet holes, a few scorch marks, some very poorly cleaned bloodstains, and as Helena sweeps his frame, she spies a collection of holsters and belts crisscrossing his waist and chest that no doubt contain an _array_ of weapons.

Oh, and the helmet. Helena eyes it somewhat warily. Stark red with blank white lenses—kinda hard to miss. Also very fucking creepy. But she supposes that's the point.

And the bat on his chest. Can't forget that.

For a moment, they just stare at each other—well, _Helena_ stares at him anyway, because where the hell else is she supposed to be looking—but with his helmet on, she can't track his gaze. After a brief maybe stare down, Helena very pointedly clears her throat and jostles her Wal-Mart bags enough to make him seemingly come to his senses.

"It's pouring rain." The way his voice rattles out of his helmet is _immediately_ off-putting.

"It is," she agrees, still unsure of how she should play this. Civilians—as a rule—are pretty much terrified of anything that falls outside of their normal day-to-day lives, but the people of Gotham are a bit more hardened than that, so she decides to try for a particularly gutsy local. "Well spotted."

His hidden expression unnerves her. She forces a pleasantly polite tone anyway.

"Can I help you?" How do civilians talk to vigilantes again? She's totally forgotten—her undercover work is rusty as hell. "I'm sort of in a rush here."

The rain runs down the polished edges of his helmet in crimson rivulets as Helena inspects the lenses, wondering if they sport as much versatility as her old domino mask or if they're purely decorative.

"I saw you come out of Crime Alley," he says, interrupting her observation. He shifts his weight and half of his jacket falls open—Helena eyes his exposed side, counting _six_ handguns before he tugs it closed again in a practiced gesture. Her eyes linger, wide with surprise.

_Holy_ _**shit.** _

First a fifth-grader with a sword, and now a walking _arsenal?_ Just what kind of company does this Gotham's Batman _keep?_

"That's, uh, because I did," Helena replies, finally forcing her gaze back to his. She rocks back on her heels, awkwardly. She's running out of ways to play the cool and causal civilian. The guns would have made anyone else bolt—shit, she's out of her armor, they should have made _her_ bolt. "Is that…a problem?"

He steps closer, looming over her. Helena resists the urge to step away, defiantly jutting up her chin to meet his gaze. _Wayne pride,_ Mother's voice rebukes her.

"Crime Alley's my territory," he tells her lowly.

 _Territory?_ What is he, a gangster? And if he is, does he think he's the first fucking scumbag to claim the East End District as _territory?_ Catwoman and Robin ran hundreds of those clowns out of Crime Alley in her youth, and Helena's content to let Huntress continue the tradition as soon as she gets her back to the flat.

"Well, unless you're my new landlord and this is your weird-ass way of asking for rent, I don't give a shit," she snaps back at him, dully realizing she's being _way_ too nasty for a civilian and this man has a _not_ _insignificant_ number of guns on his body _right now_.

He laughs. It startles Helena enough that she almost jumps. This weird-as-hell _dude_ who walked out of the _rain_ for no reason other than to fucking _annoy_ her just _laughs_ and Helena doesn't understand what is going on anymore.

"You really aren't from around here," he muses, voice lilted with a smirk she can hear but can't see. "You think Crime Alley has landlords?"

Helena works her jaw, thinking over her response carefully.

"I…don't know," she tells him slowly.

He snorts, looking away. Helena feels vaguely offended. Rain continues to fall around them, and Helena tries to causally sweep her surroundings. They seem to be alone, so if this guy isn't distracting her, what's his fucking game?

"Look." Helena glances back as he does, and their eyes catch again. She really needs to add opaque lenses to her Huntress mask. "Let me fill you in on some things. People don't _move_ to the East End District. You're born here, you pass through here, or your deadass body is dragged here. Those are the only ways you cross East End's boundary lines, alright?"

He speaks with a thick, heavy Uptown accent, Helena notes idly, in perhaps the most obvious and bleated bit of detective work she's done in a while. It's apparent this guy has more than a few feelings about this place—what _isn't_ apparent is the bat on his chest and the guns at his side, but she's not really inclined to bring either of those up while she's still unarmed and unarmored.

"So what," Helena prompts. "Are you like…kicking me out?"

The idea amuses her as much as it offends her. Catwoman's own daughter, getting booted out of the East End District? Fucking _okay._ Good one.

"Crime Alley's a shithole," he tells her seriously.

Helena lifts an eyebrow. "Really? Because the name suggests it's a _fabulous_ slice of suburbia."

She swears she can _feel_ his glare from behind the cover of his helmet.

 _God_ she's a shit when she's tired. And hungry. And cold. And—okay, the _being a shit_ thing is just kind of a perpetual state of her existence.

He crosses his arms, covering up the symbol on his chest. Helena tries not to let her eyes linger.

"I don't know what the fuck brought you to Gotham," he tells her, and Helena has to actually bite her tongue from saying _the Boom Tube._ "But if you hate yourself enough to stay here, don't do it in the East End, okay?"

"Sounds like you're not too sweet on Gotham yourself," she retorts before she can think better of it.

He just scoffs, and Helena's eyebrows slant down. She feels like she's been pretty _fuckin'_ patient throughout this guy's whole song and dance, and he hasn't given her _shit_ for her trouble. She's done.

"Dude, _look,"_ Helena all but growls out, calling on the cadence she only pulls when she's under the mask of the Huntress. "I'm cold, I'm hungry, and I'm _soaked._ I don't know who you are, or what you want, but can we _please_ reschedule this?"

She seems him pause—his expression may be guarded but Helena learned the art of reading body language from a guy who regularly hung out with _Martian Manhunter._ She can tell she's hit a nerve.

"You don't know who I am?"

Helena almost laughs—isn't that the point of his entire fucking getup?—but he sounds confused more than insulted. Not that she particularly cares.

"No." Helena retorts coldly. "And I gotta say, I'm becoming less and less interested the longer we stand out here."

"Just—" he breaks off with a sigh as something buzzes in his pocket, and she watches him pull out a cellphone with a gloved hand.

Helena's sharp eyes catch the Batman logo flash across his screen before he tucks it back out of sight.

"How do you use a cellphone when you're wearing that big fuck-off helmet?" she asks casually, content to be as much of a shit as she needs to be to get out of this nightmare encounter.

The helmet angles back to her.

"I take the big fuck-off helmet _off,"_ he retorts.

His phone rings again, and Helena makes a show of wringing out her hair while he declines the second call.

"Sounds like somebody wants to get ahold of you," she offers.

He holds down one of the buttons on the side of the phone, and Helena watches as it powers down. "Sounds like somebody else's problem." He tucks the phone back out of sight before jerking his head in the direction of Crime Alley. "Come on."

Helena blinks. "Excuse me?"

"If you insist on staying in the East End, that's your own stupid choice," he tells her, beginning to walk towards his intended direction. "But I'm not gonna let you get fucking mugged your first night. Come on."

Unsure what to do—is this him being _nice?_ Is _that_ what's happening?—Helena follows at a reasonable pace behind, still half waiting for him to pull out one of his guns and just fucking waste her.

"I'm called the Red Hood," he begins as they walk. Helena notes that it's odd to find the streets so empty. Gotham's criminals are used to the rain by now, and these wee hours of the morning—Helena checks her new Scooby-Doo watch, noting it's now two fifteen—is prime time for all sorts of seedy activity.

But the streets remain quiet as they move through them, Red Hood's boots echoing loudly under the pounding rain.

"I look after Uptown—the East End District, mostly, but that's a handful in and of itself. I typically keep an eye on Crime Alley and the Bowery, but I'll drift around, check on the Cauldron, the Distribution Center, Falcone's place, Cape Carmine." He glances over at Helena, who has unconsciously matched his stride and now walks beside him. "You don't know what the fuck I'm talking about, do you?"

Helena Wayne—blood of Selina Kyle-Wayne and just as much a daughter of the East End as the Diamond District, who returned to Crime Alley of all the places she could have gone in all of Gotham, who chose her mother's Uptown apartment over the comfort of the Manor, who knows every single dark corner of every single place he just rattled off—shakes her head.

"No," she tells him. "Sorry."

Red Hood just shrugs. "Figures. To be fair, some locals don't even realize how deep the shittiness of this place runs. I wouldn't expect an outsider to know South Hinkley from South Channel."

_Well, one's an island in the middle of fucking nowhere and one's a borough in downtown Gotham. But sure, completely indiscernible._

Helena offers a shrug right back. "Sorry, never heard of those."

"Eh, not missing much."

The pair turns a corner, and Helena starts at the sight of a group of thugs at the end of the alley who look up and promptly _bolt—_ no words, no fanfare, no preamble or explanation. They're just _gone._ Hood keeps walking like nothing happened.

"You should really look into other real estate," he tells her. The gang had upset a trash can in their haste to run, and Hood puts his foot on the rattling steel lid to silence it as they pass. "I know Uptown's cheap, but you pay for it in other ways."

"Yeah?" Helena asks, glancing sideways at him. "You seem to be doing alright."

Red Hood barks a laugh from beneath his helmet. It makes Helena flinch.

"Trust me, Gotham's robbed me fucking blind. If anything, this city owes _me."_

Helena frowns, not liking his tone or his attitude. Batman never donned the cowl for attention, or as a way to get Gotham in his debt—the bat isn't a symbol of selfishness.

"I'm not an expert," she tells him coolly. "But I feel like there are other occupational routes available. I doubt anyone's _making_ you put on that helmet."

He pauses to look down at her, and Helena isn't sure if she really, _really_ wants to know what he looks like under the hood, or if she really, _really_ doesn't.

"You think I'm talking about money," he realizes. "Or time, or effort, or whatever. This city doesn't owe me for what I've given back—I'll be the first to admit I haven't done as much as a could, but I still do a damn alright job." He shifts closer—looming like he had before. Helena meets his gaze just as fiercely.

"This city owes me for what it's taken from me."

His words are heavy, and cut her the way Robin's had just hours previous. Masks and sigils aside, these boys have _seen_ shit—there's a pull to their voice and an ache in their being that can't be faked or duplicated.

She's something of an authority on the subject.

So what happened? This Gotham seems free of Darkseid, and Helena feels her anxiety creep back. What's happened here to make these boys this way? And if Batman's still around, why hasn't he put an end to it?

There's suddenly a steady hum of vibration, and Helena blinks, knocked from her thoughts to see Hood angrily grappling for his phone.

"Didn't you turn that off?" she asks.

A slew of unintelligible curses is her answer.

"Kinda _fuckin'_ busy right now, Nightwing," he growls into the phone. "If you and the replacement don't stop fucking _calling me—"_

"Meeting, Robin's request." Helena goes absolutely still at the sound of her father's voice from the phone speaker, heart cutting all ties with her chest and leaping into her throat. "Be there. Now."

The connection ends. Helena can't breathe.

Her father. Her _father._ She knew he was here but to _hear_ him—that stoically cold voice of Batman she used try and mimic when she was a little girl—knocks the wind out of her.

Helena and Red Hood stand in silence for a moment—she losing her whole entire mind, he just staring at the phone in his hand.

"Um," Helena swallows hard. "That sounds awfully serious."

Hood silently pockets the phone before withdrawing a wallet. Helena watches, bewildered, as he pulls out two crisp hundred-dollar bills and holds them out to her.

Helena bristles on instinct. "I didn't _ask—"_

Fast as thought, he grabs hold of her wrist and yanks it up to force the bills into her hand, before curling her fingers around it. His touch is rough, but she knows he could've hurt her far more if he cared to.

"Get out of Crime Alley, preferably all of Gotham," he tells her shortly, making to move past her.

"Hey _wait!"_ Helena spins around, but Red Hood doesn't look back as he stalks through the rain, swallowed up by the night.

Helena just stands there—cold, shaken, and apparently two hundred dollars richer. She just heard her father's voice for the first time in years, she doesn't _really_ know where she is, and she's just met two people who are or have been damaged in ways she can't really articulate but feels in her bones, and she has been out in the rain for at _least_ an hour at this point.

Helena pockets the cash moodily, wishing she had a gargoyle handy to complain to.

She's barely turned back around when a man detaches himself from the shadows to stand over her, crooked teeth bared in a smirk.

"Nice cash, doll," he drawls.

Helena hauls back her fist and drops him in one.

Stepping primly over the newly unconscious body, Helena makes her way back to the abandoned building she'd ditched her stuff in, climbing precariously back to the top floor.

She settles down, letting her feet rest for the first time that night, staring out at the East End skyline. Hood's unexpected—and honestly unwanted—generosity could get her a hotel room, but she's still short an ID and a backstory. Fuck—she's still short a _name._

Part of her—an overwhelming part, actually—wants to go as Selina Kyle, but she still doesn't know if that name is already in use or not.

Idly irritated—Helena honestly can't decide if she'd rather be in fucking Apokolips right now—Helena digs out a bottle of water and a granola bar as she just sits back and _thinks—_

A scream pierces the night, and Helena lurches to her feet.

 _"_ _Help! Someone,_ _ **please! Help—"**_ the voice cuts off sharply, and quiet returns to Crime Alley.

Helena hesitates for a fraction of a second before she's scrambling to pull on her Huntress gear, tripping over herself in her haste before she tugs on her mask and throws herself from the window, grappling gun firing into the darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ~~okay first of all holy shit, I really really can't believe how many of you like this fic oh my god thank you so much I'm honestly stunned I thought nobody was going to care about this silly little story ahhhhh you all are the best oh my god~~
> 
> alright, anyway, a few things to note: on the suggestion of a reader, I've raised the rating of the fic from T to M, strictly due to swearing. I'm fairly foul-mouthed myself, and am prone to forgetting that excessive swearing is just as explicit as gory violence and graphic sexual encounters. this fic will have precisely _zero_ M-rated violence or sex scenes (I mean yeah people are still gonna get their assess kicked but I'm not a very gory person so it's not gonna be like a Mortal Kombat fatality or anything) so the rating bump is strictly because of my fondness for the f-bomb.
> 
> second thing to note: quite a few of you were very concerned that I was going to keep Damian Wayne as a shitty little boy and not factor in the growth he has shown in the comics. y'all. this was chapter _one_ lmao everyone in this fic is gonna grow and change. that was just Helena's first impression! spoiler but like, she's not gonna be too jazzed by any of the bats at first—they aren't really the most welcoming, inclusive group in Gotham, and they don't know who she is or why she's here.
> 
> final remark: _yes_ the batgirls are gonna make an appearance but I haven't decided who I want in what role yet and don't know when that's gonna happen. ~~Stephanie Brown is my favorite fictional character across all forms of media you bet your ass she's gonna be in this fic.~~ I'll update the character tags as that happens, but to be fair, Helena's got her hands full with the batboys at the moment.
> 
> I don't know when the next update will be (this one came unusually fast because I had most of it written when I posted the first chapter) but I will do my upmost to not make y'all wait too long. I have a full-time job to juggle, but the enthusiasm y'all have shown for this fic and my own love for Helena will keep me motivated. if you want an easy way to be notified when I update, [I tweet out the new chapters on my writing twitter](https://twitter.com/reduxwriter). it's private because I don't need my boss knowing I write goddamn batman fanfic in my spare time, but feel free to send a request. I'm far less chatty there than I am elsewhere, and I totally get not wanting to scroll through all my mindless prattle.
> 
> wow okay those were some long ass author's notes but uh the tl;dr is you're all fucking stellar, thank you thank you _thank you_ for your interest, I hope you liked this chapter (my first time writing Jason Todd, hope I did alright) and I will see you all next time back in Earth Prime's Gotham. as always, feel free to reach out to me with comments, questions, or concerns. bye y'all  <3
> 
> oh shit wait I actually did forget something, I saw like one or two comments asking about the title. I took it from Vergilius' quote: _"Nox ruit, et fuscis tellurem amplectitur alis."_ which translates to _"Night rushes down, and embraces the earth with shadowy wings."_ so the title of the fic is, essentially, night rushes down. ~~or technically "night rush" listen man I only know Latin secondhand I'm a boring Midwesterner we don't even speak English correctly~~


	3. three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "yes, I know this duality, this double nostalgia; / I know the insatiable longing / in winter” -H.D.
> 
>  
> 
> _(In which nostalgia gets Helena killed, Huntress encounters Crime Alley's saint, and a batarang is bloodied.)_

Helena drops down onto a street a few feet away from her loft, crossbow drawn.

Her bones ache in protest, but Helena is an old hand at ignoring pain and discomfort in lieu of pursuing her goals—a trait she learned more from her mother than her father, who had no paternal butler to stitch up her injuries, only a few stray cats to keep her company as she licked her wounds.

Selina Kyle's resilience was legendary—she often took as much of a beating as Batman did, but still retained her elegant sophistication and warm cheer. Bruce and Selina didn't fight often—not after they'd married—but when they did, Helena recalls most of their arguments revolving around some injury Selina had hid, or pain she'd underplayed. Where Bruce Wayne and Batman were two entirely different entities, Selina Kyle and Catwoman bled into each other—with the same woman playing whatever role she needed to survive.

Helena had donned a cowl because of Father, but wearing masks—that was Mother's domain.

She creeps around the corner, tensed for a fight as she plays her gaze over the entrance to Crime Alley, searching for the source of the cry. It had sounded so close, but the rain is coming down in sheets now, and Helena feels her senses thrown for a loop as she keeps turning—

Two figures stand at the other end of the Alley, and Helena is hit with an almost dizzying amount of déjà vu. How many times had she and Mother come across this exact scene? Helena is suddenly struck still—the images hitting her like a physical blow as she labors under twenty-one years of memories all suddenly looming before her.

Helena feels like she's fifteen again—donning a domino mask for the first time and traipsing after Mother and Father, determined to impress, unwilling to fail, refusing to fall short—

_"_ _You're_ _**worrying** _ _too much, Bruce."_

_"_ _God forbid one of us maintain a rational level of concern."_

Helena had trotted along, too busy scouring every corner of her surroundings to really listen to her parents' soft chatter.

_"_ _She's too_ _**young,** _ _Selina, she isn't ready."_

_"_ _Grayson was only_ _ **twelve**_ _when you bestowed upon him the ugliest costume in history. Helena's got three years on him,_ _ **plus**_ _more training,_ _ **plus**_ _better equipment,_ _ **plus**_ _more supervision."_ Selina had then graceful leaped ahead of her husband and daughter to lasso a gargoyle a few yards away with her whip, neatly swinging up and perching on top of it, treating her family to her signature, Catwoman smile.

_"_ _Everything's going to be fine."_

And everything had been, because Batman and Catwoman couldn't be conquered. Because they were the beacons of Gotham—saviors of a city it seemed god had forgotten. They did so much good and poured so much into Gotham and gave so much of themselves and bled and bruised and broke for this city over and over and over again and—and— _and—_

And god in fucking heaven—Helena misses her parents.

It hits her like a physical blow, knocking the wind from her. It's too much, suddenly, all of it—being back in Gotham, seeing the Batman sigil everywhere, passing by Mother's favorite haunts, hearing her father's voice, seeing the Robin costume—Helena's breath catches in her chest.

She's homesick. Desperately fucking homesick, and still not even a third of the way through the seven stages of grief—because fuck, when you lose everything you've ever fucking loved in the span of a month, when does the grieving end? Every step she took back in her old Gotham was a reminder of how much she'd _lost._ The pain was just on a constant cycle, always resetting, always churning, always expanding and growing and covering her until she couldn't breathe—

Helena's world tilts dangerously before her—blinded by her mind's eye, it isn't until she hears a soft gasp that she finally remembers herself and jerks back to the present because _Jesus Helena you're literally at the scene of a mugging get your head the fuck out of the past and focus up—_

The girl's eyes are wide—Helena's reflexive observation categorizes them as a soft blue—and before Helena can duck back into the shadows or gesture for quiet, they're growing _wider_ , face suddenly shining with shock and surprise and _hope—_

Helena's arm jerks up—her body's muscle memory prompting her to draw her crossbow before her brain can remember how to order the action—

The man's head snaps to the side so fast the joints in his neck pop like gunshots as he takes in the sight of Helena standing there, feeling like she's weighed down by her own memories as she pulls the trigger, the man already hefting his knife—

Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck _nononononono_ _ **NO—**_

The bolt fires off too late—she knew it would, damn her to every single fucking circle of hell she _knew—_ and the gleam of the knife vanishes as it's stabbed without finesse into the girl's thigh—

The man curses loudly as the razor-sharp steel of the crossbow bolt sinks into his hand, slicing open the pale flesh and making him drop his weapon and back off, cradling his new injury as his eyes snap to Helena's.

She charges forward, cape swirling behind her as she swoops in low, dodging his anticipated right hook and surging back up with her elbow extended, cracking the bone of her arm against the bone of his face, snapping his head back with a sickening _crack—_

She seizes him by his newly-exposed throat, hauling him towards her to build momentum before slamming him back against the wall, watching his head smack against the brick. He moans with pain, and she watches his pupils dilate as his world spins before him. Gritting her teeth, Helena yanks the bolt still sticking out of his hand free, listening to him cry out as she spins it with a practiced flick of her wrist, prompting four hooks to spring out of the mechanism.

Without preamble, she grabs his injured hand, forces it flat against his heart like he's pledging allegiance to this masked woman, and stabs down.

The bolt eats through the skin and tendons of his hand easily, sinking into his chest and anchoring his hand there. He immediately tries to pull it away, but the hooks dig into his punctured skin, holding fast and _tearing—_

The man _howls._

Helena's eyes blaze behind her mask as she turns sharply on her heel, hurrying back to the fallen girl. She hears a shuffle of feet and is dully aware that the assaulter is doubtlessly trying to make a quick escape. She pulls the penlight out of her belt, unconcerned.

He'll be easy to find later.

She flicks the light on, careful to not aim it in the other girl's eyes as she crouches down, examining the wound with a tense jaw.

It's bad. Worse than bad, it's probably _fatal—_

Snarling at her own thoughts, Helena places her free hand against the wound, careful not to jostle the knife, and the girl sucks in a sharp, pained gasp as Helena mutters an apology, trying to staunch the flow of blood.

"Easy, easy," she soothes, mind racing as she cycles through potential solutions, but nothing sufficient surfaces. All she can think about is femoral arteries and blood loss and fuck fuck _fuck_ if the girl hadn't _seen_ her, if she hadn't lost her fucking _head—_

 _Father could fix this,_ her subconscious hisses, her doubts and fears and anxieties all preying on her as she scrambles to do _something_ , her self-confidence shaking—

_Can't even save a girl getting mugged in Crime Alley, but you were going to save all of Gotham?_

Helena attaches the light to the shoulder of her suit, freeing up her other hand, and the girl gasps on a pained breath at the additional pressure—

_Arrogant girl; always overreaching, always overstepping—always falling short when it matters most._

Helena flicks her gaze up to meet the stare of the girl—finds herself staring against those same washed-out blues—paler and softer than Helena's own, shiny with tears.

"Who…who are—?" Her voice is low and breathy—chest heaving with the labor to breathe. She's shaking so badly Helena thinks she might dislodge the knife.

Helena grimaces.

She opens her mouth to explain that she's nobody—an intruder, an interloper, a daughter of a different Gotham—when she sees the raw fear beneath the blue of her eyes.

She isn't going to make it, and they both know it. They're both sitting in a pool of blood large enough to drown in, and it gets bigger with every desperate beat of the girl's heart. Helena knows too much about first aid to even allow herself to consider a different outcome—this girl is going to slip into shock and die from blood loss.

"Helena," she whispers, pitching her voice soft and soothing. What does it matter? Why lie to a dying girl? "I'm Helena Wayne."

The girl's forehead puckers—attention clearly catching on Gotham's most renowned surname—before her features contort again, twisting with pain—

"Hey hey hey," Helena rushes out, shifting herself to move closer, resting her forehead against the other girl's to keep her head from lolling forward. "You're alright, you're gonna be just fine—stay with me, okay? Breathe, come on, you can do it."

The mixture of rainwater and blood soaks Helena's gloves, and she struggles to keep them steady through the downpour and the girl's shaking. Her dark hair hangs forward like a curtain, masking her face. Helena's fingers itch to push the locks out of the other girl's eyes but she can't spare the hands.

"'m Helena…too…" the girl chokes out. "That's…my name."

A jolt goes through Helena—shocked like she'd touched an exposed wire, or been burned by an open flame.

_Two Helenas._

The world goes vertigo—pushing and pulling at the same time. Bile rises in her throat. _Two Helenas two Helenas two Helenas_ _ **two fucking Helenas—**_

"Helena," Huntress chokes on her own name, gritting her teeth. "Come on, not now, please, you can't just—please, Helena, _please—"_

Her father died like this. The infallible, indomitable Bruce Wayne. The man night was named for. He died in her arms, with her begging him not to go, this same tang of bloody rainwater on her tongue, this copper aftertaste she's come to associate with passing—with _loss—_

_"_ _Father, please, Fath—_ _**Batman** _ _please you can't,_ _**I** _ _can't, without Mother, without you—please don't make me please I_ _**tried,** _ _Dad, I tried so hard I'm so_ _**sorry—"** _

The other Helena chokes on her next breath, and Helena feels her blood soak into the Huntress suit—the stark white cross on her chest now stained ruby.

The other Helena falls limp against the vigilante propped up against her, and Helena winces—wrenches her eyes shut tight and grits her teeth and thinks about how much she doesn't want to check her pulse, doesn't want to know, doesn't want it to be true—

Was this Helena _her?_

"Helena," she breathes. "Helena, please, please don't—" her voice breaks—who is she mourning? Herself or this stranger? Where is she, _who_ is she? Her heart is beating a bruise into her ribcage as she lifts one bloodied hand to the girl's limp wrist—

Silence. Her pulse is gone. Flat line.

_Two Helenas._

The rain washes over Helena, and for one moment, her world is silent and still. She stares at the young woman who shares her name, emotionless.

Then, like a flipped switch, anger comes roaring through her veins.

 _"_ _The only thing more dangerous than a Wayne's pride,"_ Mother once remarked. _"Is a Wayne's_ _ **guilt."**_

It isn't hard to track him down—Helena is just as home in the East End as she is in Wayne Manor. There's no hidey-hole she doesn't know about, not hidden alleys Catwoman hadn't shown her, no boarded up buildings she and Batman hadn't busted into.

Puddles splash loudly as Helena marches through the streets, jaw clenched so tight she risks snapping her own teeth as she searches—

She finds them near the Bowery boundary lines—a group of them, five or six. She spies her target quickly—he's leaned up against the wall, still fussing with the crossbow bolt affixed to his chest, hand still pinned against his heart. Helena clears her throat.

At once, every eye is on her. Batman instilled in her the need for surprise and ambush, but at the moment, Huntress wants a fucking fight—and she's going to get one.

"I came back for my bolt," she tells them, voice carrying through the alleyway.

An uneasy tension uncoils, and Helena watches as the group rouses itself, drawing closer, some pulling weapons, others sizing her up.

"You the Hood's bitch or something?" one of the thugs calls. "Gonna need Red Robin to save you like Spoiler did?"

A more rational, coherent Helena Martha Wayne would have committed those names to memory and tried to puzzle out the meaning behind them—Spoiler? Red Robin?—but Helena Martha Wayne is neither rational nor coherent.

Helena Martha Wayne is _furious_.

Her armored fist cracks against the jaw of the thug who'd spoken, and when his head snaps sideways, she smashes her knee into his groin, swinging into an uppercut as he doubles down in pain.

A solid kick to the chest sends him stumbling back hard, feet tangling in his dizziness and pain, and he topples over backwards, looking up at Helena with wide, dazed eyes. Working her jaw, Helena takes a step forward and plants her other foot on his chest, applying pressure until she hears him gasp for breath.

"Well?" Helena calls, knocking her fists together in an absent-minded gesture. Her voice is hard and cold—less Huntress and more Batman. All Wayne. "Anyone else have anything to say?"

The next few moments are very busy.

Another gang member charges her, and Helena gladly moves to meet him, a flat chop to his throat drawing a strangled scream as he drops to his knees, allowing her to deliver a swift kick straight to his skull, sending him topping sideways, unconscious.

His friend draws a gun, but Huntress is faster, smoothly drawing a deadly dark batarang and letting it fly with practiced precision. The polished steel flashes malevolently under the streetlights before finding its mark—the man's right shoulder. It catches on his skin—sharper than her crossbow bolts—and embeds itself there, one wing of the bat-shaped metal sticking out while the other is buried in his skin, blood already leaking from the wound and fuck, Helena hasn't even gotten _started_ yet.

She snatches the gun from his slack grip and pistol whips him so fast she feels her own joints pop at the action before she hurls the gun away into the darkness and just hauls off and grabs a fistful of his shirt, bodily throwing him after his weapon, watching as his head bashes against the filthy wet concrete.

There's movement behind her and she sidesteps to dodge another man's clumsy rabbit punch. Her responding upswing cracks his jaw—snapping his chin back like she'd been aiming to strike at the sky instead—

All too soon, the alleyway is quiet, and Helena approaches the man with her bolt still stuck in his chest.

He makes a last-ditch attempt to dart away before she can reach him, but Huntress is faster—sidestepping so quickly her cape swings out behind her, obscuring them from view temporarily as she grabs a fistful of his shirt right above where his hand is still pinned.

He whimpers. Helena just stares.

"You killed her," she tells him—voice fringed and sharp like the edge of a saw.

The man is shaking. "Please, please, _please,_ c'mon it was an _accident,_ I jus' wanted her money, I swear, I never wanted to hurt anybody, please miss, _please—"_

"An _accident?"_ Helena snaps, stepping forward, looming over him. _Don't become Father, don't become Father, don't become Father—_

"I _swear_ lady! The girl didn't even have her _purse_ on her, I jus'—I jus' _scare_ people, I was never gonna _hurt_ her but then _you_ showed up an' I _panicked—"_

Helena grabs him by the throat, the steel casing around her fist digging into his skin, leaving him gasping, eyes bulging, skin paling—

_Two Helenas. Two Helenas._

Huntress can't think straight—can't _see_ straight. Her vision is a mess of blood and rainwater and pale blue eyes so much like her own.

_"_ _That's…my name."_

God, Helena is going to dream of that encounter for weeks—this other Helena is going to fucking _haunt_ her.

"I didn't think it'd kill her!" the thug protests. "I stabbed her in her damn leg! There's no organs there!"

Helena flexes her fingers where she holds him by the throat. He wheezes.

"That's where the femoral artery is, you absolute fucking _idiot,"_ she hisses out. Her tone is subzero, words frozen solid and spat through gritted teeth.

The man pales under the harsh streetlights. Helena can hear her pulse thudding in her ears.

"She bled out, slipped into shock, and _died."_ Helena is one wrench of her wrist away from doing very permanent damage to this man's neck, and she thinks they're both very aware of that.

The man is shaking in her grip. "I didn't _know,"_ he tells her. "Come on, it's not like I slit her fucking throat, I wasn't tryin' to _kill her—"_

"Who was she," Helena asks fiercely. "Why did you pick her—who _was_ she?"

"Jus' some _girl!"_ He's properly wailing now, and Helena is struggling to remember where Huntress ends and Batman begins. "She came out of those dumpy apartments over on Scape! She was jus' distracted, lookin' down at her phone and I jus'—I jus'—"

Helena hauls back her fist. She wants to _break_ him, suddenly. Wants someone else to feel worse than she does—wants to _make_ them feel that way.

_Don't become Father, don't become_ _**Father—** _

"That is quite _enough."_

Helena freezes, fist hanging suspended where she holds it—drawn back, ready to fracture every last bone in the man's face—

She turns, and there, at the mouth of the alley, standing tall and stubborn against the rain, is Dr. Leslie Thompkins.

Helena can only stare.

Thompkins is a familiar face—she'd passed before Helena was born, but her profile still graced many medical journals and the walls at Gotham U's College of Nursing. Father even had a candid of her and Alfred that he kept with small collection of personal, family photos, and Mother had been lobbying to get a portrait of her up in the Manor before all hell broke loose in her own timeline.

But here, in a parallel Gotham where Helena has no ties to anything and is soaked to the bone with blood and water and all but overheating with adrenaline—here, Dr. Leslie Thompkins levels the darkest look Helena has ever seen.

"So. You _can_ be reasoned with, hm?"

Her medical coat snaps at her legs as she stalks forward, hands deep in her pockets, glasses speckled with rainwater, grey hair cropped short and dripping wet at the ends. Helena just keeps staring.

"Let him go."

Helena's grip tightens reflexively. The man chokes on a strangled breath.

"I said, let him—"

Helena rips out the bolt still anchored to his chest with one swift, sickening pull—tearing painfully straight through the skin to retrieve her ammunition, which she coldly replaces in her holster, still bloody.

The man screams as Helena releases him, turning sharply on her heel to face Thompkins, who assesses her carefully as Helena approaches. She leans around the young vigilante to frown at the man writhing on the ground, before looking back to Helena.

"You. Come with me."

Her voice is cold, and lightly accented. For one wild, terrible moment, Helena wants to resist—wants to say _no._ She doesn't want to be told what to do; she doesn't want anyone's interference. But then the moment passes, and Helena feels herself dim—concave. She shrinks into herself, allowing her cloak to swallow her up again. She silently reclaims the batarang the thug had ripped out of his shoulder from the ground as she passes, weighing the weapon briefly in her hand.

Lacking other options—and realizing, belatedly, she'd come dangerously close to going too far—Helena skulks after Thompkins, shrouding her steps in the shadows of Crime Alley's buildings as she follows the older woman.

Returning to the scene of the murder makes Helena feel sick, but they stop before the exact spot of the incident, and Helena hangs back as Thompkins unlocks the door to a nondescript building that sits on the corner at the edge of Crime Alley's entrance—the condemned penthouse Helena's Wal-Mart bags are stashed in is just a block away.

Thompkins' clinic is spotless on the inside—everything is neat, and organized, and well lit. It takes Helena a moment to adjust her eyes to the newfound brightness as she cautiously steps in, hovering near the doorway and letting her gaze play over the room.

The countertops are lined with usual items—cotton swaps, bandages, disposable thermometers, various bottles of medication, tongue depressors, creams, splints in an array of shapes and sizes. The window above the sink displays the gloomy Gotham rainstorm, and Helena bets it's built out of the most durable glass available.

The other Helena lies on a steel table to the left of the clinic. Helena can hardly manage a glance—she's pale and still and Helena sees a flash of soft blue in her mind's eye before she looks away again, tracking Thompkins across the room.

"So, I take it you aren't the one who killed her?"

Helena jolts at the flippant remark, going stock-still.

"What?" she demands. _"No,_ I didn't— ** _of course_** I didn't."

Thompkins doesn't seem to take her denial one way or the other. She just quietly collects a clipboard sitting on her desk and begins scribbling notes. On the table beside the other Helena's body are a collection small plastic baggies containing a bloodied knife, a key, and a smartphone. Evidence, Helena realizes.

"You left the scene of the crime," Thompkins murmurs. "That doesn't lend you credibility."

Helena scowls. "It wasn't _my_ crime," she snaps.

The doctor lifts an eyebrow, though her gaze never strays from her clipboard.

"So why stop at all?" she queries.

There's no accusation there, but Helena's guilty conscious rears its ugly head.

_If you hadn't stopped, he wouldn't have stabbed her. Hope your trip down memory lane was worth it._

"I just…" Helena's voice sounds small, even to her. All her Wayne bravado bled out back in Crime Alley and she is once again a cold, wet, bloodied twenty-one year old girl with nothing but a mask and a city in shambles. "I just wanted to help."

For a moment, something that might have been pity flashes across Thompkins' face, but its quickly replaced by cold judgment.

"You wanted to help, but you didn't call 911?" she arches a silver eyebrow. "Didn't rush her to a hospital? My clinic is less than thirty feet from where she died."

Helena stews at the woman's rebuke. She still has one foot in her old Gotham, where Dr. Thompkins' Crime Alley clinic shut down after the doctor's passing. The thought hadn't even occurred to her. And she can't call 911 when her shitty prepaid phone is still in a _box_.

"She was losing too much blood," Helena reports instead.

Thompkins eyes her at the edge of her vision. "An aspiring medical professional?" she questions somewhat coolly.

Helena looks up to meet her gaze behind the mask of Huntress.

_Wayne guilt._

"I don't need a medical license to understand the odds of surviving a _knife_ to an _artery,"_ she snaps back.

Thompkins bristles at her tone, eyes gleaming from behind her glasses as she draws herself up to full height—nearly even with Helena herself—blocking out the harsh lights of the infirmary and reminding Helena that _she_ may be Bruce Wayne's daughter, but this is the woman who _made_ Batman.

"You sought revenge over a doctor," Thompkins presses, refusing to drop the subject. "You didn't even _try."_

Helena's hands twitch at her sides—fists still hungry for a fight.

Wayne pride. Wayne guilt. Helena wears them both on her sleeves—either badges of honor or stains she can't scrub out, she can never decide.

Had she tried? Helena's last moments—the _other_ Helena—had not passed that long ago, but she struggles to recall the details. Blood and rainwater. The flash of the man's knife. Helena's pale blue eyes—so much like her own, only a shade or two off—the memory of her father dying—

"You don't know me," Helena eventually tells her. She shrugs listlessly, the action splattering the floor with blood that still coats her gloves and suit. "You have no basis for that."

Silence spreads between them. Helena feels the tension prick at the skin at the back of her neck.

"Vigilantism isn't heroic, you know," Thompkins murmurs. "I don't approve of it—no matter how skilled someone is, or how much good they say they're doing. There are systems in place that take care of crime. I don't trust masks."

Helena lets that statement sink in, knowing her father had likely heard the same speech many times. She wonders how he took it. It obviously never convinced him to put down the cowl.

"I'm not asking you to trust me," Helena replies honestly, her voice low. "I'm not asking you for anything."

Thompkins scoffs quietly under her breath.

"Not tonight, perhaps," she agrees. "But you will."

Helena digest the doctor's cryptic warning with a cold stare, before deciding that she isn't going to win in a game of intimidation, and to move along if she's hoping to get out of here without making things worse.

"So what are you going to do?" Helena demands, striding forward, looming over the doctor, pointed edges of her mask throwing a familiarly shaped shadow across Thompkins' face.

Thompkins doesn't even offer her a glance, bent over her desk, pen scratching against the paper.

"She's a Jane Doe, and she'll sit in the morgue until she's identified." Here her pen pauses, and Helena stiffens expectantly. "As for you— _you_ should go to the police."

"This is Crime Alley—just tonight, five other girls like her have been killed," Helena argues irritably. "There probably aren't even enough officers to spare."

The indecency of her words burns her throat, but it's true—there's just too much evil in this city to stop everything for one crime. It's that very concept that drove Father to become Batman in the first place.

A long stretch of silence follows her remark, and Helena gazes squarely at the doctor's back, waiting for a response. She never met Dr. Thompkins in her Gotham, but she heard enough stories from her parents to know she hasn't said anything that the good doctor can't counter—this is the woman who traded barbs with Bruce Wayne in all stages of life, she won't be stumped by anyone. Thompkins turns around then, regarding Helena with a cold, steady stare.

"Batman recruited you, didn't he?"

Helena scoffs, backing off—torn between being annoyed and being wary. She has to sever any connection this Gotham sees between her and the Bat, but detaching herself from the very shadow she rose up in isn't exactly a seamless trick.

"Batman doesn't know who I am," she snaps. Then, because she was raised by two people who—among many, _many_ other things—were tack-sharp opportunists: "Doesn't he have a brat with a sword who already has that gig?"

Fishing for information under the guise of sharing well-known facts is a fairly reliable trick—most of the time, the other person will elaborate or correct.

Thompkins' lips quirk in a humorless half-smirk—Helena's clearly failed to impress.

"As a doctor, I'd advise against picking a fight with Robin," she returns coolly. "It will undoubtedly shorten your lifespan."

Helena's expression sours, and Thompkins returns to her clipboard.

There's another moment of silence—Helena feels exposed despite the mask that guards her face—when Thompkins speaks again.

"You should leave," she advises. She glances over her shoulder, catching Helena's gaze. "For what it's worth, I don't really suspect you of being a murderer of any kind, and I doubt the police will either. At best I'd call you misguided. But there are others who frequent my clinic who might not be so easily convinced."

The name _Batman_ hangs in the air. Helena takes the hint.

"You're a good person," Helena tells her softly. "But you're a really, _really_ bad judge of character."

Thompkins arches an eyebrow, wary.

"And honestly—just between you and me—I'm pretty desperate."

She hits the lights.

The clinic plunges into darkness, with only the faint, blinking lights from various machines as Helena darts forward to seize the evidence Thompkins had bagged—the girl's phone and key.

She hears a clatter behind her—like Thompkins is scrambling to grab something—but ducks out before the doctor can retaliate.

Bursting back out into the rainy Gotham twilight, Helena breaks into a run, clutching the two baggies tightly in the hand that has—in the span of an hour—plunged a crossbow bolt into a man's chest and tried to staunch the fatal bleeding of a stab wound.

She doesn't stop running until she hits Scape Street, and even then, only pauses to briefly catch her breath. The exhaustion she'd bullied herself through earlier in the night is back with a vengeance—Helena doesn't have much left in her if she lands herself in another fight.

Still, key in hand, Helena spies the apartment building the thug had mentioned. _Royal Ridge_ is the name on the sign out front, but a few lights have burned out and it instead reads _R y l Ri ge._ It is fairly run-down, but so is all of Crime Alley—it doesn't stand out amongst the entire dilapidated backdrop of East End. The parking lot is a pot-hole ridden mess, and houses a few damaged cars Helena eyes as she sweeps past.

She scales the first staircase silently, practice allowing her to deaden the sound of her footfalls despite the echoing stairwell. With one key and about eighty units, this could take all night—unless fate decides to stop kicking her fucking teeth in. It occurs to Helena that she could very easily be spotted, that criminal was under no obligation to tell the truth, and what she's doing is stupid and wrong and so poorly executed that she kind of _deserves_ to get caught doing it.

Helena inserts the key into the first unit. It doesn't turn. She sighs.

The odds that this apartment complex has security cameras? High.

The odds they ever fucking check it? Low. Very, very low.

So Helena starts testing the key in every lock, working her way down the hall, debating on whether or not she should play drunk or ignorant to pass off her bloody fucking Huntress gear in case some unlucky soul crosses her path at three in the goddamn morning—Mother once convinced someone she was coming back from a Halloween party when she was caught doing something shady in costume—when the lock in one of the doors finally turns and Helena nearly tumbles inside. She didn't even make it to the second floor.

Taking a moment to orient herself, Helena is tempted to flick on a light, but is paranoid at the notion of drawing attention to the room, so she clicks on her penlight where it's still attached to her suit as she casts her gaze around the room.

Blocking out everything else, Helena spots her prize relatively quickly—a simple brown handbag resting on an office chair.

She drifts over to it, silently ghosting through the room to pick up the slightly tattered purse. Inside, she finds a typical assortment of items: a wad of receipts, chapstick, a charger, a small notebook, a pen, a pack of tissues, a pair of headphones, a bottle of hand sanitizer, and—of course—a wallet.

Heart in her throat—Helena unzips it, letting it unfold in her hands.

_Helena Bertinelli._

Helena stares at the license, utterly numb. The dead girl smiles up at her somewhat timidly from the glossy finish of her ID.

She'd expected it to say _Kyle_ , to be honest, but then no daughter of Selina Kyle's would die in a back alley—and she certainly wouldn't need the services of a wayward Wayne.

 _Bertinelli._ Is there a Selina Bertinelli here? Or has this Helena lost all connection with her parallel family? Did she grow up alone? An orphan, like the real Helena Wayne, but twenty years too early?

_Focus, Lena. Get it the fuck_ _**together.** _

An out-of-stater, Helena notes, trying to bully her brain to concentrate on the task at hand and not drift to other, more unsavory places. Her address places her at 992 Summersweet Court in Central City. A Midwesterner gone off to college, Helena supposes, still working to marshal her focus. Central is a fair taste of city life, but nothing compared to the sprawling urban world of Gotham. She probably felt out of place, struggled to gather a routine. If she was living in Crime Alley, her income was far from disposable. Scholarship? She hadn't been here long enough to establish a permanent address.

Her birthday is mercifully mismatched with Helena's—she doesn't think she could stand another stroke of similarity. She's also just shy of nineteen—a college freshman, like Helena suspected.

Helena slides the license back in the wallet and slips that into a pouch on her belt, quickly flicking her cape back over her form to hide the new addition, like she's wary of being watched.

Batman was night incarnate, but even he never turned his back on the dark.

 _"_ _All rational creatures fear the dark, Helena."_ He'd knelt before her, suited up as the Bat but keeping the cowl down, for which Helena remembers being thankful. Even she had difficulty looking Batman dead in the eye when he was fully in uniform. _"It obscures. It hides. It cloaks. The moment you think you know what's hiding in the shadows, you're wrong. Respect darkness, be wary of shadows. They protect your enemies just as well as they protect you."_

It was one of Helena's first lectures, and—like most of Father's lectures—was met by one of Selina Kyle's over-the-top eye rolls.

 _"_ _Thank you for that_ _ **stunning**_ _insight, Bruce,"_ she'd drawled, smirking when Father flicked his gaze over, mildly annoyed. Selina gave up stealing when Helena was born, but she could never resist swiping her husband's thunder whenever possible.

 _"_ _Do you have different advice, Selina?"_ he'd asked, ever the diplomat, watching as Mother checked the retractable claws on her glove, seemingly disinterested.

_"_ _Gotham's not afraid of the dark," she'd replied, tone trademark tart. "Gotham's afraid of_ _**that."** _

_Helena—only eight at the time—had jumped when Mother flicked her finger out and the claw had snapped free like a switchblade; the slim, silvery knife extended towards the bat sigil blazed on Father's chest._

Wallet secure, Helena shakes herself from the memory, finally giving the rest of the apartment a good look.

The room is simple, if a little worn. The wallpaper is peeling in some places, but there's a poster for something called _Ashes on Sunday_ tacked on the wall, and below it is a schedule for the Gotham Knights baseball team. Did she go to Gotham U? Helena makes a mental note to follow up.

Helena takes another step, floorboards creaking, giving sound to her intrusion as her gaze passes over the girl's desk—overcrowded with textbooks, notebooks, printed-out PowerPoint slides, highlighters and pens in every color imaginable, and on top, a flyer for a local magic show presented by—

Zatanna fucking Zatara smiles coyly at the Wayne heiress from the image printed on the pamphlet. She's much younger than the Zee from Helena's Gotham, and all smiles as she brandishes a classic magician's wand and holds out an overturned black top hat. The flyer is enchanted, as when Helena shifts her gaze to assess it at another angle, the item popping out of the hat changes—from a bouquet of flowers, to a standard white rabbit, to a flurry of dollar bills.

ONE NIGHT ONLY! SEE THE MAGNIFICENT MISTRESS OF MAGIC!

**ZATANNA!**

_Wilson Klass Theater_

_Half-Past Midnight_

Helena hesitates for only a moment before she reaches out and takes the flyer, folding it into a crisp square and depositing it beside the wallet. The show is tonight, according to the date established by Helena's Wal-Mart receipts, but is probably long over given the hour established by Helena's Scooby-Doo watch. But, Zatanna Zatara—in one form or another—being alive and well and clearly still very magical in Gotham is something Helena intends to bear well in mind.

The creeping feeling of dread returns, chilling Helena where she stands—just how similar are these Gothams? The Zatanna on the flyer appears to be Helena's age, but the Zatanna she said goodbye to was well into her thirties. Yet they couldn't possibly be _different_ people—not _really._

If those two Zatannas could lack certain features, but still be essentially the same person, who's to say the Helena that just bled out in her arms isn't—?

Helena throws open the girl's closet with a bit more force than needed, eyes roving over what appears to be a very jacket and sweater heavy wardrobe. A handful of Gotham University tee shirts add more credibility to Helena's current working theory, and she pulls one from the hanger to examine the size, finding that the other Helena also wore smalls.

She closes the closet doors, but keeps the shirt folded over her arm, a horrible idea that had been born only a moment ago slowly making its way to the front of her mind, just waiting to be acted upon.

_Two Helenas._

Well, only one now. Only half of one, really.

Helena Bertinelli is dead. Helena Wayne doesn't exist.

Somehow, both Helenas are going to have to meet in the middle.

Thompkins is going to inform the police, at the very least, but Gotham's huge and plays host to more than a few wandering early twenty-somethings who find themselves caught up in the city's darker side. One unlucky one-of-state college student fresh off the plane from Central, only about three weeks into the semester? There's not much for the police to go on, and that assumes they even get that far after Helena's meddling.

But Thompkins knows Batman—she had a direct line to the Manor back in Helena's Gotham. If he gets involved, Helena doesn't want to think about how hard she'd have to work just to stay ahead of him and his apparent _family_ while _still_ trying to sort out the shit show she's landed herself in.

She needs this cover—she _needs_ this other Helena. What are her other options? Leave Gotham? How far does this other world extend? Are there doubles of everyone? Should she contact this world's Superman? Get hired on as a PA to Oliver Queen and hope for the fucking best? Send up a smoke signal to goddamn Themyscira?

Helena's hands have curled into fists without her knowledge. She doesn't _want_ to leave Gotham. She can survive here—she can figure this out—she just needs _time._

If she didn't leave her _own_ Gotham when it was reduced to little more than ashes and rubble, she sure as fucking shit isn't about to leave this one.

Mind made up, Helena reaches back down towards her utility belt and pulls out the batarang she'd ripped out of the thug's shoulder back in Crime Alley. It isn't totally clean, and that suits Helena just fine. She studies her reflection in the non-bloodied blade of the batarang's right wing, thinking.

What she needs is confusion. Dissent. In-fighting. She needs Batman to be preoccupied with all the wrong problems. She doesn't know how large this supposed _family_ is, but she's already met two of the members, and if they're the baseline, she's getting the impression that functionality and cohesiveness aren't really their strong points.

She recalls Red Hood's waspish behavior towards someone called _the Replacement._ Remembers one of the thugs mentioning a Red Robin and Spoiler. Surely the Dick Grayson of this world is suited up in one way or another too, right? Add in Batman himself and his sword-swinging sidekick and that's already enough people to leave some loose ends that Helena would love to unravel further. And if Batman's allies prove too difficult to manipulate, she knows his enemies would fall for her games in a moment: Riddler, Two-Face, Scarecrow, Killer Croc—Helena grew up memorizing the move sets of those assholes, she holds all the cards here.

Without the Wayne part of her name and identity, Helena's a ghost. Untouchable. Total smoke. She can become whoever she needs to be whenever she needs to be it. She has the advantage at every angle—she knows everything about all of them, they don't have a clue who she is.

No. Helena _has_ to stay in Gotham—she'll fight to stay here, if it comes down to it. And she'll get back to _her_ Gotham if it absolutely fucking kills her.

Determined now—this is what she needed, a plan, a goal, something to work towards, to keep her fucking _anchored_ —Helena strips again, pulling on the tee shirt she'd stolen. Her own blood-splattered boots and leggings stay, but she does swipe a hoodie from the closet, which bares the same name and logo as the _Ashes on Sunday_ poster. Helena reminds herself to look into whatever the fuck that is, exactly, because with the way her day's been going, it's probably some kind of fucking anarchy group and she'll be arrested on sight for wearing it.

She pulls a spare throw blanket off the bed and bundles her Huntress gear up in it—she has to get it washed somewhere, but that's a problem for when she has slightly more room in her brain to handle more problems, because right now she is at fucking capacity.

She braids her hair back to keep it out of her face and to vary her look as best she can before doing a final sweep of Helena Bertinelli's room.

She feels sick with it all, still—can still hear Helena's initial cry for help, can still see her pale blue eyes, can still feel her shaking, can still only blame herself.

_Focus, Lena. Come on, now._

She lets herself out through the window. It's an awkward descent with her arms full of bloodied Huntress gear, but only one floor down and she lands back on solid ground relatively easily. The rain is starting to let up, and Helena yanks her hood over her head and makes her way towards her new destination.

Part of her—most of her, actually—feels awful. She feels terrible for how she treated Thompkins, terrible for how she's treating Helena Bertinelli, terrible for what she's about to do—but what the fuck other options does she have? She has no resources, no allies, no clue where she is, and no doubt in her mind that no one would believe her story.

She still has to find a way to wash her goddamn Huntress gear without getting the _police_ called on her.

So she soldiers on, head lowered as she takes the long way around, eyes up for any sign of more gangs or a particularly angry doctor. But the streets are empty, and Helena makes it to her objective unbothered.

She's only seen Park Row Theater once in person—Father had brought her along on the anniversary of her grandparents' death. As the story goes, Uptown, and the East End in particular, was well on its way to becoming as affluent and high-class as the Diamond District before Joe Chill gunned down Thomas and Martha Wayne. After that, the place fell back into corruption and decay. It is, like most of Crime Alley, given a fairly wide berth.

But it does have one usual tourist, and Helena knows damn well that barring the Bat-Signal, fucking with Park Row Theater is a sure-fire way to get Batman's attention.

The question isn't whether or not Helena's plan will _work_ , but rather, is Helena's plan any fucking _good._ She supposes she's going to find out.

She digs around in her stolen purse for a moment, coming up with the notepad and pen before ripping out one of the pages.

 _Thanks for the loan,_ she scribbles out, before stabbing the batarang through the door and anchoring the note there.

Let the bats think what they will of _that._

-0-

"I believe your friend is up to his old tricks," Dr. Thompkins remarks.

Commissioner Gordon sighs—long and heavy. He sounds in desperate need of a long sleep and a good drink.

"He told me he quit that after Red Robin," Gordon insists. "He told me that Spoiler isn't his, and the new Robin was a special case that wasn't up for debate."

Thompkins hums noncommittally, and Gordon watches as she retrieves cleaning supplies from one of her cabinets and begins to spray down the stainless steel operating table in the middle of her clinic.

Gordon arches an eyebrow at her pointed silence.

"There's another one, isn't there."

"A girl, early twenties by my estimate," Thompkins reports. "Favors purple and black. Cross on her chest. Carries a crossbow. The bluest eyes you've ever seen." She scrubs at a particularly stubborn stain. "She's carrying guilt. Loads of it. Not quite sure if it's hers to bear or not."

Gordon rubs at his temples forcefully with both hands, heaving another sigh through his fingers. "Jesus Christ."

"Agreed," Thompkins answers. "She stole evidence I'd collected from the scene—the victim's key and cell phone."

Gordon laughs blandly—the sound has no humor.

"Interfering with police work?" he mutters. "She's definitely one of his." He sighs, digging a notepad out from the pockets of his battered trench coat. "She got a name? Or a moniker or whatever?"

Thompkins shrugs, throwing her rag down on the table and moving to wash her hands in the sink. "Nothing she cared to share. She's cagey—frightened, I think. She seemed disoriented." She glances up in the mirror, catching the Commissioner's eye in the glass. "But she's trained. She isn't like Spoiler—she knows exactly what she's doing, and she can hurt people with an awful lot of finesse."

"Like I said," Gordon mutters, flipping his notepad shut and stowing it away again. "Sounds like Batman's newest adoptee."

"I'm not so sure," Thompkins advises, giving him a sideways glance as she turns around. "If she _is_ in league with him, she's different—less disciplined, less controlled." She sighs, looking out into the rainy Gotham skyline. "I don't know who she is, and I think there may be a chance he doesn't either."

Gordon raises an eyebrow. "Is that really possible?"

Thompkins folds her arms, thoughtful.

"I don't know," she admits. "But I'm willing to watch it play out."

Gordon shrugs. "Fine by me. It's not like he'd give me a straight answer anyway." His wandering gaze finds the morgue locker the latest Jane Doe had been laid in. He sighs, and Thompkins casts him a look of knowing sympathy.

"Busy night?" she asks quietly.

The Commissioner grinds his teeth. "The bats were mysteriously absent—could've actually used them."

Thompkins hums thoughtfully. "I wonder if our new friend has something to do with that."

"I'm not gonna let it keep me up tonight," Gordon mutters as a dismissal. "Got too much other shit that does that just fine."

"Get some sleep, James," Thompkins advises. "I'll keep you updated."

Gordon nods politely, turning to leave. "Thanks, Doc. Don't work too hard."

"Same to you."

The pair part ways—both knowing neither sleep nor a break in their workloads is on the horizon.

Outside Thompkins' window, dawn breaks over Gotham, and Helena Wayne tries to fall asleep in a dead girl's sweatshirt in an abandoned penthouse, her Huntress gear a bloody bundle on the floor, and Zatanna's flyer burning a hole in her pocket.

She dreams of the other Helena, and wakes with a start.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I MISSED BATMAN DAY FUCK
> 
> also hey this update took like a strong 60% longer than I thought it would so thanks to everyone who stuck around. I have a lot of stuff to juggle right now so updates won’t be speedy by any means, but I also have no intentions of abandoning the story, so hopefully we can meet somewhere in the middle. (I also insist on having every chapter be at least 6k words so like? idk kinda takes a hot second to crank that out) I wrestled with this chapter a lot because introducing and killing a character—no matter how minor—in the same chapter always chafes at me, but Helena needs an undercover ID more than we as the audience needed me to let the other Helena hang around in the story unnecessarily, you know? I scrapped a bunch of scenes where our Helena actually like, meets and befriends the other Helena, but it felt like wasting time. This story is about the batfamily, not random civilians who are only gonna get killed off anyway.
> 
> also just to clear some Lore Stuff up ~~even though I’m sure a lot of you probably know this but for anyone who doesn’t~~ technically there are two different characters who are Huntress: Helena Bertinelli and Helena Wayne. I’m preeeeeetty sure Helena B came before Helena W (she’s the one who was in Justice League Unlimited and Batman: The Brave and the Bold) but had no relation to the Wayne family. her costume was notably different, she didn’t come from Earth-2 (her creation might predate that break in DC’s continuity but like don’t quote me) and she’s just generally a whole different person ~~she even had a tryst with Dick Grayson which was a very weird thing to stumble upon when doing research for this fic~~ Helena W is, as I think we all know, the daughter of Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle from the alternate DC universe, which is called Earth-2, as opposed to the “main” DC universe, Earth Prime. In the storyline I’m hijacking, World's Finest, Helena W gets sent to Earth Prime by mistake, and _in that storyline_ takes up the identity Helena Bertinelli to disguise herself. so that’s where I pulled this out of. the Helena B Huntress from DC’s animated world just doesn’t exist here. idk what happened to her, DC won’t tell me.
> 
> also also _also_ I don’t fuck with New 52 Helena B like full-stop Mariah Carey I don’t know her she isn’t here
> 
> I think that’s the last sort of lore-explination I have for quite a while. other than that, I’ll just make a pretty broad, sweeping statement that I play fast and loose with canon, and am pretty much just picking my favorite bits of each character’s timeline and mashing them all together, as the fic gods intended. I hope you all still find it enjoyable.
> 
> also hey if you want to know when I’m gonna update this fic or see bits of writing that got cut or idk ask me a question or make a request or something, I have a [twitter that is exclusively about my fic writing endeavors](https://twitter.com/reduxwriter). I don’t often respond to ao3 comments just because it bothers me that replies/comments by the author get added to the fic’s overall comment count, but please know that your support means the world to me <3
> 
> you can also follow my [regular everyday person twitter](https://twitter.com/reduxroyal) if you’re so inclined, or idk take a peek at my [tumblr](http://reduxroyal.tumblr.com/). or just keep checking back until the fic updates which is honestly what I do with fics I read lmao
> 
> feel free to drop me a line somewhere if you’ve got any comments, questions, concerns, or if you spy a typo ~~I’m my own beta reader so like shit slips through the cracks sometimes~~
> 
> and just because I know someone’s gonna ask _of course_ Helena is going to encounter Selina at some point in this fic, that’s just a drama bomb for another day.
> 
> until next time, friends!
> 
> ~~bonus points if you get the Ashes on Sunday reference~~


	4. four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I am made and remade continually. Different people draw different worlds from me.” -Virginia Woolf
> 
>  
> 
> _(Helena explores Gotham without the mask of Huntress. Something stalks her footsteps.)_

The thing about Superman's disguise as Clark Kent is it's fucking _genius._

No, seriously. It's the smartest thing in the world. It's so absurd that it has no business working, but it does. The reason no one has ever figured out that the two are the same person is because he literally told everyone _everything_ about being a Kryptonian. Helena actually thinks Kal-El wrote his own damn Wikipedia page, not to mention all the "exclusive interviews" that Clark Kent always somehow managed to get.

Clark Kent couldn't be Superman, because Superman lives at the goddamn North Pole in the Fortress of Solitude—he doesn't drink coffee out of a paper cup and work a nine-to-five job at the _Daily Planet._ By informing anyone who would listen of every single detail about Superman, and then doing the _literal opposite_ as Clark Kent, no one ever put it together. Sure, no one has _seen_ the two of them together, but to accept Clark Kent as Superman, you'd have to accept that the Man of Steel moonlights as a clumsy reporter who lives in a one-bedroom apartment, and that's just fucking silly. It's absurd to anyone who doesn't already know it's true. People don't think Clark Kent is Superman for the same reason that you don't think your coworker who looks _kinda_ like Beyoncé is _actually_ Beyoncé. That'd be _dumb._

It's the same trick her father used to separate Bruce Wayne from Batman, though Father was always very quick to point out that _he'd_ been doing it _first_ and did it _better_ than Clark _ever_ did—at which point Mother would usually interrupt him with her laughter.

The point is—Helena needs to build a reputation independent from Huntress, and she needs to do it, like, right the fuck now.

She'd blundered that night in Crime Alley—a misstep so horrific she'd metaphorically snapped her fucking femur. She's gone over the events so many times—poured over her memories of that night, meticulously picking the whole thing apart, identifying the problems, noting her flaws, committing her shortcomings to memory.

She _isn't_ going to fuck up like that again. Absolutely not.

And the first step is distancing herself from the perpetrator of the crime—Huntress.

Thompkins has doubtlessly raised the alarm about her alter ego, for one thing. Coupled with the fact that Helena would bet anything Robin has passed her name and appearance around to the other members of Batman's alleged family, Helena isn't going to show her face as Huntress again without a damn good reason any time in the near future.

And anyway—she still hasn't found a way to get that blood out of her suit. She'd scrubbed the worst of it out in the East River in the dead of night like a fucking _creep,_ but it honestly needs a good washing before she's willing to wear it again, and as accepting as Uptown is with weird shit, she isn't trying to push her luck by hauling it to a laundromat. Besides, Huntress was only ever a mask. Helena is who she actually is.

Wayne or Bertinelli, well—that's a more complicated question.

So with Huntress benched for the foreseeable future, Helena needs to gather her wits, calm the fuck down, and try and engage in some rational thinking.

And first on the agenda is familiarizing herself with the identity she'd pocketed.

It's all well and good to have an ID—even better that at a glance, the two Helenas share a healthy number of physical traits. And while she can wear every shirt in Other Helena's closet, rattle off her address, carry around her apartment key and her phone and her wallet, none of it fucking matters if she doesn't _know_ this girl.

What did she do? Where did she hang out? What was her social circle like? What classes did she take? Who _was_ she?

Helena has to _nail_ this deception.

She pulls the hood of her jacket up, expression set.

Slow progress, critical thinking, certain results.

 _No_ mistakes.

She carries that attitude with her as she makes her way through Uptown, crossing the boundary line into Midtown. It's a haul and a half from her borrowed loft to her destination, but paranoia bars her from the bus system. Gotham's public transport is rife with crime, and the last thing she needs is for some fucking moron to try and _rob_ her.

And anyway…it's nice. Helena loves Gotham—she adores her city, truly. She'd spend the odd summer in Star City with the Queens, and weekends in Metropolis were always on the schedule, but Gotham is home. Walking back along these familiar paths is peacefully nostalgic. It's cold and it's foggy and Helena feels lighter than she has in months as she moves forward, seeing people go about their business, watching city life chug along, basking in the normalcy of it all.

_No Darkseid._

Helena doesn't allow herself to think about the potential end to that sentence— _no Darkseid_ ** _yet._**

It hurts more than she cares to admit, but Helena gives Old Wayne Tower a wide berth as she passes through Midtown. The Tower is gorgeous—all stone and glass and gothic—but it's also the active headquarters for Wayne Enterprises, and all Helena really needs to start her day is to bump into Bruce Wayne himself on his way to work.

So Helena skirts around the building she spent so much time in back in _her_ Gotham, maneuvering around the crowded streets of Midtown. The city is spread across three islands and connected by a multitude of bridges, overpasses, subways, and ferries. Helena slips in with a pack of pedestrians as she heads farther towards Downtown, idly taking in the passing cityscape, softly pleased that everything is more or less the same.

The group slows to a stop at a crosswalk, and Helena passes her gaze over the people surrounding her—mostly businessmen and women, dressed in snappy office wear, mixed in comfortably with joggers and dog walkers and stay-at-home parents each juggling a few kids and strollers apiece, all seemingly content as they wait for their turn to cross. Helena feels some of the tension start leave her shoulders when uneasy chattering tickles her ears, and she glances over her shoulder to track the source.

Two women—a couple, Helena assumes, eyeing their twin wedding bands. They hold a map between themselves, both pointing to different places on it. Helena watches them bicker softly for a moment as she waits for the pedestrian light to flash, rocking back on her heels.

The map lacks opacity—some cheap thing they must have bought out of desperation at a nearby drugstore—and she can _just_ see an outline of Gotham's three islands through the thin paper.

She can also see that they're holding the map upside down.

The light changes. Helena sighs.

The crowd begins to move forward and Helena gingerly extricates herself from it, murmuring apologies as she crosses over to where the wayward couple stands.

"Are you lost?" she asks, prompting both women to look up in surprise.

"Oh, hi there," the black woman offers a friendly half-smile. "We are, kind of, actually."

"No cell service out here," her redheaded wife replies. She rolls her eyes, clearly annoyed. "I'd _love_ to call my carrier about it, _but."_ She splays her free hand out in a gesture of uselessness. Helena cracks a smile, charmed by the pair.

"Gotham's old," she explains. "There's a lot of lead in these buildings. Sometimes it wrecks reception. Especially if your carrier's out west." She shrugs. "I'm a local though, if you wanted a hand."

Both women brighten immediately as this, and Helena smiles softly as they quickly turn the map towards her, babbling about their anniversary plans that they'd been planning for months that had all suddenly gone awry and they'd almost given up and just gone to Metropolis but they had one last hope to salvage the trip—

"We're looking for the Riverfront Center," the redhead eventually explains. "Do you know where that is?"

Helena smiles. There's a quiet, warm pleasure in the answer being _yes—_ she's felt like a stranger in her own city for days now, and to be able to confidently point someone in the right direction soothes something in her.

"Riverfront's a good distance away," Helena tells them. She points in the direction she's heading. "It's at the southern tip of the Downtown island—past the China Basin District and at the edge of Old Gotham. There should be a ferry running from Midtown, but…" Helena pauses, letting her arm fall back at her side, suddenly seized with indecision. There _used_ to be a ferry, anyway, but now, in this _new_ Gotham where everything is _wrong…_

Helena grits her teeth.

_No mistakes._

"…but I'm not exactly sure of the schedule." She offers the two women an apologetic shrug. "Sorry."

She lingers a bit more—taking one of Other Helena's pens and marking a few key places of interest on their map, outlining the fastest subway routes, circling the best coffee shops she remembers, and marking which areas of town to avoid, before sending them on their way.

"Oh, and thank you very much," the black woman tells her kindly. "Most folks don't stop and help these days."

Helena shrugs, smiling back. "Nah, someone would've stopped," she insists. "People in Gotham always stop."

And it's true—it's how Gotham pulled itself up from its darkest hour of crime and violence and despair. Yes, Batman has all the tools and gadgets and vehicles in the world, but at the end of the day, Gotham's biggest strength will always be the sheer altruism of its people.

Gotham is a city of good Samaritans. Helena believes this in her bones.

"Come on," the redhead tugs on her wife's arm, flashing a smile. "Maybe we'll see Batman!"

Helena's smile freezes, but she manages to hold it until the pair are out of sight, and with one last lingering glance at Old Wayne Tower, Helena also takes her leave.

Gotham University is as charming and picturesque as Helena remembers. It's an open campus flanked by the Burnley District on all sides, with the city forming a barrier around the famous quadrangle, which Helena slips quietly onto, bundled in her weatherproof jacket.

The campus is lively despite the late September chill that hangs in the air—Gothamites are completely immune to poor weather, honestly—and she casts her gaze around the quad, idly assessing the crowd. Some students sit on blankets, loosely grouped together with a handful of books and notebooks scattered around. She spies a football being thrown back and forth and knows—without a doubt—it's going end up hitting some poor bystander. Joggers and dog walkers make the rounds. There's a tour heading towards her, and Helena steps off the sidewalk to let them pass, nodding at the tour guide who smiles cheerfully at her as though they're old friends before leading the group of prospective students and parents onward, rattling off fun facts about the campus' architecture.

She notices one of the kids in the tour has his phone out, filming, and she quickly ducks away, hustling down the sidewalk in the opposite direction. Head down, she hurries off, but suddenly stops short as a dog comes bounding up the sidewalk towards her, pursued by what she can only assume is the owner.

Crouching down, Helena snags the dog gently by its collar, holding it in place as the boy rushes up. The dog makes a valiant effort to lick her face, but her reflexes keep her dry as she nimbly pulls away. The dog continues to wag its tail, unbothered.

"Sorry," the boy apologizes as he approaches, clipping the dogs leash back on its collar. He offers a lopsided smile, rubbing awkwardly at the back of his neck as Helena lets the dog go. "He's a handful. He, uh, he's real nice though, if you wanna pet him."

Helena glances down. The dog tips his head sideways, tongue lolling out as he looks up at her.

"Hello there," Helena murmurs, scratching his ears fondly. She'd never had a dog—Father always joked that Mother wouldn't hear of it—but the truth was they'd all been too busy to give it the proper attention it would deserve. If Father wasn't knee-deep in Wayne Enterprise business, then he was ankle-deep in sewer water tracking down Killer Croc or some other member of the Rogue Gallery. A spike in human trafficking had kept Mother plenty busy—in the months leading up to Darkseid, Helena hardly saw her at all. Helena herself was caught between keeping up with her classes and patrol, and Dick had found her dozing off while studying plenty of nights, ruffling her hair fondly and remarking, _"Not so easy being a Kid Wonder, huh?"_

The dog pushes his head further into Helena's lap, sighing heavily in that way dogs do while his tail wags somewhat uncertainly behind him.

Helena takes a steadying breath. She has to get her head out of her Gotham.

_No more mistakes, Helena. Get it together._

She stands up, giving the dog one last pat on the head, and nods to the owner before striding off towards her destination.

Paranoia strikes again as Helena passes by the university's grand Kane Library. She could get what she needed from there with no issue, but the amount of people she'll undoubtedly cross paths with makes her wary. She can't hide forever, of course, but she'd prefer to keep a low profile for as long as she can, so she heads towards a smaller building that hosts some spare classrooms, a few vending machines, a fair amount of seating, and a lab of computers available for use.

Pushing back her hood, Helena settles herself at a free station, eyes sweeping the area around her on instinct, meticulously detailing her surroundings. It seems silly—the room is mostly empty, save for a few bleary-eyed students doubtlessly finishing a last minute project of some kind—but she commits their faces to memory all the same, idly suspicious before reaching into her bag and pulling out one of the few tools she has left at her disposal.

Her cryptographic sequencer is a marvel of modern technology and one of Lucius Fox's most prized inventions. Her father's version—now in her possession—had been used for everything from hacking past Arkham Asylum's security to tracking Gotham PD while on patrol. It is capable of rewriting code, unraveling safeguards, and encrypting information.

Currently, Helena is using it to access Helena Bertinelli's school email.

Which—listen. Helena can hack a school email without anyone's help— _if_ she had like, an hour and a half to herself and decent equipment. But in a very public space where anyone could be looking over her shoulder, she's content to attach the sequencer to the PC's tower in one swift movement, and then prop her backpack up against it, hiding the device from sight.

In a perfect world, Helena would have the sequencer synched to her watch or her phone and could track its progress, but this isn't a perfect world, and Helena has no phone and a Scooby-Doo watch, so she sits stiffly in the chair, trying to remember how to look inconspicuous.

She hasn't had to _blend_ in quite some time, and even before everything went to hell, it's not like the heiress to the Wayne family could go anywhere unnoticed—sitting in a room full of her peers with no one taking a second look is distinctly…odd.

It's the kind of comment Constantine would cuff her for back in her Gotham— _"There's those Kyle and Wayne genes at work. Always gotta be the center of attention, huh? Fuckin' A."_ —and Helena can't help but crack a smile, clearly hearing the con man's rough accent in her memory. She wonders how he's doing—if he and Zatanna and the others are still working, still holding the line, still protecting the city—

Gritting her teeth, Helena abandons that train of thought. She can't _do_ anything for them right now; she has to focus on helping herself.

_No. Mistakes._

Helena kills some time trying to crack the four-digit passcode on Other Helena's phone. She gets locked out fairly quickly, but isn't deterred—she likes puzzles, she likes numbers, and there's only ten thousand possibilities. Statistically, she will eventually get it.

It's only been a few days since the incident, but no messages or missed calls have gone through. Helena feels torn about that. The image she's shaping of Other Helena is a shy, introverted, college freshmen who hadn't quite found her footing yet. It makes Helena's identity theft easier, but far sadder—isn't that everyone's one need? To have someone— _anyone_ —out in the world wondering where you are when you don't come home at night?

Helena slips the locked phone back in her pocket. She's projecting. Hard.

Her computer boots up as the sequencer finishes its work, bypassing the computer's flimsy security and allowing her to access a database of the users on the university's server. Forcing herself not to look over her shoulder—which is, of course, only the guiltiest-looking action in the book—Helena hastens to type in a few commands and selects _Bertinelli, Helena_ from the list, relaxing slightly as the sequencer prompts her to reset the account's password _._

Securely inside, Helena begins combing through the details of Other Helena's Gotham U account—she looks up her classes, grades, professors, and _yep_ , there's that scholarship she'd suspected. She finally clicks over to see what degree she's working towards—

An education major. Helena's heart softens. Certainly a noble ambition. Mother had toyed with the idea of guest lecturing at Gotham U, and Father was on the board of directors for the School of Business, sponsoring numerous scholarships through Wayne Enterprises. And Helena, frankly, had _loved_ school.

She keys in the command to print out Other Helena's schedule, suddenly wondering—how far is she going to take this façade? Is she _really_ going to attended freshmen level courses? The thought honestly makes her shudder.

She'd loved school, yes, but general education classes… _god._ With their outrageous class sizes, sprawling lecture halls, and strict attendance policies, Helena had never been more thrilled to move on to the smaller, more intimate and serious upper classes when she'd been in school. She isn't exactly jumping at the chance to relive being a freshman, but then again—literally what the fuck else is she going to do all day? She _is_ Helena Bertinelli now.

Shelving that thought process for the time being, Helena calls up a search engine, deciding to make the most of her time with a computer as she types in the first name on her list.

_Bruce Wayne_

A million results come flooding back—promotional shots, paparazzi pictures, magazine covers, ads for Wayne Enterprises—Helena blinks, momentarily overwhelmed, though she doesn't really know what she was expecting. She'd seen the Wayne Enterprises sign her first night in Gotham—of course he's just as popular here as he was in her own city. If anything, he's even _more_ so.

Helena frowns as she tries to sort through everything, searching for anything familiar, but there's something _off_ about this version of her father. She never met Bruce Wayne's billionaire persona—he had hung that up when he started seriously dating Mother, years before Helena came along. She's heard stories, of course, and Selina Kyle-Wayne had graciously saved some of his most embarrassing interviews from those days to pull out whenever it struck her fancy to mortify her husband, but beyond that, it was all sort of…irrelevant.

But now, staring down a _laundry_ list of ex-girlfriends associated with her father, Helena would _really_ like something to cross-reference. Was he really _this bad?_ Her mouth pulls down with dislike as she scrolls past another picture of her father sporting what can only be called a _smarmy_ grin. She supposes she can't blame him for wanting to leave that persona well alone.

She keeps looking, occasionally getting sidetracked by various pieces of media, like a BuzzFeed quiz titled _Which Bruce Wayne Ex Are You?_ and its related quizzes, _What Does Your Favorite Dick Grayson Tweet Say About You?_ and _Can You Match The Eyebrows to Each Gotham Prince?_

What the _fuck?_

Determinedly searching deeper, Helena skims over article after article pertaining to Bruce Wayne's love life, stolen sapphire gaze seeking her mother's matching emerald pair as she trawls through a _database_ detailing every woman he's ever appeared in public with. There's Jane Webb in an elegant cobalt evening gown, Adrienne Barbeau stepping out arm and arm with him with a charming sunhat, and Grey DeLisle appearing at his side for the opening of an art gallery. Woman after woman after woman—from actresses to heiresses to artists to…Helena narrows her eyes at the description beneath a photo of her father with a attractive young woman with blonde hair and a slightly less confident smile than the others. There's no way he'd…

 _Felicity Smoak,_ the description reads. _Executive PA at Queen Consolidated._

Helena almost groans, rubbing her temples irritably. Really? Oliver Queen's PA? And _future_ ** _wife?_** _Really?_ Was nothing sacred in this Gotham?

 _He probably has no idea,_ Helena muses, clicking away so she doesn't have to see any more. _If Mother and Father aren't together here—who's to say Felicity and Oliver are?_

The thought makes her stomach roll, and she resolves to keep searching, though part of her knows if Bruce Wayne _was_ married, she'd have been swamped by thousands of articles covering every aspect of the wedding before she'd see anything about his girlfriends. People _still_ talk about her parents' wedding back in her Gotham—it would be _everywhere._

Deciding on a new angle, Helena begins broadly, typing in _Selina Kyle_ to the search box.

Limited results, and none of them relating to her mother. Helena narrows her search, only permitting articles that include the word _Gotham_. This fetches all of _three_ results, all of them pertaining to a woman named Kim Kyle who apparently owns a seafood restaurant in Downtown that has been featured in papers a few times. Below the results, she sees the word _Selina_ crossed out, indicating nothing could be found within her exact parameters.

 _Nothing._ Her mother's a ghost.

Helena drums her fingers on the desk, idly annoyed. She knows—just like she had earlier—that objectively, there's nothing for her to be upset about. Helena Wayne clearly doesn't exist in this Gotham, so it makes perfect sense that her parents aren't together. And, furthermore, she fully believes that happiness can be achieved through more than one person, and has no patience for the concept of a _soul mate_ or _one true love._ The idea that Selina Kyle could _only_ be fulfilled if she married Bruce Wayne, or vice-versa, is nonsense. Both of them lived lives of fair contentment before they even _knew_ each other.

But. _But._ Helena grimaces. It doesn't make her insides squirm any less—just like the sight of Bruce Wayne and Felicity Smoak on a _date_ had made her physically recoil. It's _wrong_ in a way that is difficult for Helena to articulate.

The idea that Selina Kyle-Wayne—the woman who had bled and battled for Gotham just as much as anyone else, if not _more—_ is nothing more than another face in the crowd grates at her.

She considers searching for _Catwoman,_ but her fingers freeze on the keys. She doubts anyone is monitoring her session on this computer, but even still, it's clear this version of her mother is staying well out of the spotlight, and searching for her secret alter ego right after searching her name is something of a bad look. Besides, her heart is a bit tender still from seeing so many women with her father who _aren't_ her mother. She needs a break from that line of investigation.

So she keeps going down her list: _Helena Wayne_ gets her no relevant results, no matter how she frames the search, and _Huntress_ nets nothing helpful. For her own piece of mind, she searches _Joker_ to ensure he's locked up in Arkham Asylum, but it doesn't help _that_ much—he's escaped before and he'll do it again, no matter what Gotham he's in. Hesitating for a moment—some old adage about asking questions you don't want answers to briefly floats through her mind—before she just does the damn thing and types in _Robin._

The number of results almost rivals her _Bruce Wayne_ search, and Helena begins to sort through them when another _fucking_ BuzzFeed quiz catches her eye. This is one called _Which Robin Are You?_ and Helena frowns because, how can you make a quiz with only one option? Curious, she clicks, and finds some kind of group shot—individual photos all arranged side-by-side, figures all baring that trademark _R…_

Five. Her chest goes tight, mind spinning out as she leans closer—almost nose-to-nose with the monitor, searching their faces, hardly daring to believe it—

Five different people— _five!—_ all fairly youthful looking, all wearing various versions of the same basic suit. _Her_ suit. Those signature swatches of gold and scarlet and emerald, all trimmed neatly in black.

Five. Helena honestly thinks she might faint at the fucking workstation. No wonder the Robin she'd met had been so put-off by her possessiveness—apparently her old mantle gets passed around like a fucking white elephant here.

She skips to the end of the quiz, examining all the possible outcomes. All the _Robins_ that apparently exist.

The first is easy—she'd know Dick Grayson anywhere, and has seen enough pictures of him in his _highly unfortunate_ Robin costume to know for certain. He sports a wide grin in the photo, caught mid-flip between two rooftops, but even the nostalgic cheer the image brings can't slow her heart rate. The next boy? Helena frowns, peering at the image.

It's not Dick, clearly—he's far too stocky, just a bit taller, and….stiffer, somehow. The distance between camera and subject makes it difficult for her to pick out details, and anything helpful is carefully guarded by a domino mask. She skips to the next one, feeling panic and anxiety building at the base of her skull, promising a hell of a migraine if she pushes on, but she just can't stop—can't believe this is all real.

The next Robin seems a _bit_ older—a teen, perhaps, where the first two were not. He's also the first one to have pants, so Helena assumes he's the only one with any goddamn sense—Gotham gets _cold_ at night—but he's just as much of a mystery as the last one. Another nameless, dark haired boy standing proudly beside Batman like he belongs there. Helena clicks the _next_ button.

A girl, this time, and if Helena wasn't already numb with a hundred variations of _bad feelings_ , she'd be dully cheered that at least Batman brought on _one_ girl, even if it wasn't his daughter. She sports unruly blonde hair and a wide grin—a contrast to the dark haired, serious boys that preceded her—and grudge match for the mantle aside, Helena decides she likes her.

She doesn't know who the fuck she _is,_ but she likes her.

_Next._

Her old friend from her first night in Gotham returns, and Helena feels herself scowl at the look of disdain he somehow clearly communicates despite his fucking _mask._ His suit is the most well-equipped for actual physical contact, Helena notes, and yep, he's still got the fucking _sword_ in his hand. The sight rankles her as much as it had the first time she'd seen him—Batman preached nonlethal combat _always._ She's not exactly a samurai, but she's fairly certain there aren't too many ways to swing a sword at someone _nonlethally._

That feeling creeps back—her stomach plunges down, making her whole gut swoop at the pull of gravity. It would be better—a _thousand_ times better—if this Gotham was completely different from hers. The _just off enough_ aspect makes her skin crawl, and kicks her paranoia up to eleven, anxious that she'll miss something, or assume some truth from her Gotham that doesn't apply here and gets her fucking killed.

Feeling her panic start to rise, Helena shuts the computer down, her new mantra _no mistakes, no mistakes, no mistakes,_ swirling round and round as she rises from the workstation to collect the schedule she'd printed off earlier.

There's another girl standing by the printers when Helena approaches—a bit shorter than Helena herself, and sporting a messy blonde ponytail—idly clicking a pen in her hands repeatedly as she loiters near the machines. Helena leans around her to peer into the tray and finds it empty. She frowns—hadn't she printed it?—and the girl glances over.

"The printers aren't working," the blonde says, shrugging apologetically. "The desk guy said he was going to get more ink, but that was, like," she idly checks her phone for the time. "Ten minutes ago."

"Oh." Helena shifts her weight—she hadn't realized how rusty she was with normal civilian interaction until this exact moment. It had been easier earlier, interacting with a purpose, but aimless small talk has never been her strong suit. Even her last few months in _her_ Gotham, the only people she talked to regularly were Zatanna Zatara and John Constantine, and it's not like either of them were benchmarks for normalcy.

"My dorm has a printer," the girl suddenly offers, snapping Helena out of her own headspace. She tilts her head towards the doors. "It's kind of a haul, but it's free. Wanna use it?"

Helena blinks. "Oh, thanks," she says, genuinely touched by the girl's kindness.

She smiles—bright and cheerful. "Of course! Share the wealth and all that, right?" She sticks out a hand. "I'm Stephanie Brown."

Helena's lips quirk up just slightly—the girl's charm is catching.

"Helena Bertinelli," she replies, willing to give herself a gold star for not stumbling over the name as she accepts Stephanie's hand with a firm shake.

"Whoa!" Stephanie pulls away, eyebrows rising. "Damn, that's an iron grip!"

Helena blanches, immediately yanking her hand back—she learned how to shake hands from Bruce Wayne, Oliver Queen, and Clark Kent, she supposes she should have expected this—but Stephanie laughs it off.

"Must be a business major," she guesses, not a dent in her good humor. Her eyes are literally _sparkling._ "Oooh, or maybe poly sci? Gonna be the next Mayor of Gotham?"

"Ha," Helena lets out an awkward noise that sounds vaguely like she choked on her way to laugh. "Uh, no. I'm an education major."

Stephanie gasps, mouth popping open with delight. _"Really?_ Me too! Oh my gosh, that's amazing! You'll be such a good teacher! You're so nice and— _wait."_

She cuts off curtly, eyes suddenly narrowing. Helena freezes, not daring to breathe.

"I don't think I've seen you in any of our lectures?" Her tone is loosely accusing. Helena panics.

"I, um," she starts to stammer out a sentence with no godly idea of what she's actually going to say, when Stephanie's expression clears, and she snorts.

"Totally kidding. Those lecture halls are huge!" She laughs merrily. "You looked so worried! Have you been cutting class, Miss Bertinelli?" She shoots Helena a falsely reproachful glare, waggling her eyebrows wildly.

Before Helena can even think of a reply, Stephanie already turning to lead the way out of the office, and Helena scrambles to yank her sequencer out of the computer before hustling after her.

She catches up just as Stephanie is exiting the building, shrugging on a weatherproof jacket much like Helena's own, expect where Helena's is a drab grey, Stephanie's is a vibrant purple.

"Ready?" she asks cheerfully. "Conroy Hall isn't too far."

Helena nods. She vaguely recalls Conroy's location on campus, but she's still relieved when Stephanie sets out, content to let her lead on while Helena rushes to recall the layout of a campus she hasn't been on in at least a year and a half.

"So, what dorm are you in?" Stephanie asks curiously, and Helena grimaces a bit. She'd been hoping to brush up on her knowledge of Other Helena before being grilled directly like this, but she supposes Stephanie doesn't know her either way, so it's something of a moot point.

"I live off-campus," Helena explains. She very noticeably doesn't elaborate, and Stephanie nods, graciously sidestepping that line of questioning.

"That's pretty cool," she reflects instead. "Gotham's got decent public transportation."

Helena nods. Gotham's subway system can't be beat—provided there's a Bat-shaped shadow lurking in the corner ensuring everyone behaves themselves.

Stephanie continues to chatter as they make their way through campus. Does Helena have any roommates? A pet? A car? Has she tried that new breakfast place on Bastion Avenue? Did she start her Bio 1100 essay yet because like, Stephanie likes frogs but not enough to write _four to six_ ** _pages_** on them.

She's an absolute chatterbox, but Helena isn't put off in the slightest. She's used to being the more soft-spoken one in most groups, and listening to others make conversation is something she genuinely enjoys.

Helena carefully navigates Stephanie's questions, offering up the safest responses she can without seeming outwardly guarded or cagey. Luckily, Stephanie doesn't appear to suspect much of anything, a plows right along, accepting all of Helena's mostly unhelpful answers without issue.

Her one near-miss comes when Stephanie inquires about which history class she'd enrolled in, and Helena nearly blurts out _American Legal Thought,_ which is, of course, the class _she'd_ taken when she'd been a student here.

"Uh, Revolutionary America," she manages to say instead, frantically recalling the class she'd seen listed on Other Helena's schedule.

Stephanie nods, absorbing this information. "I think I know a few people in that class," she says, brow furrowed. "That's at eight, right? Like, in the morning?" She winces in sympathy. "That's gotta be _brutal._ Especially if you live off campus."

Helena shrugs. She's never slept the recommended six-to-eight hours. She's not terribly worried.

"That reminds me…" Stephanie trails off, and Helena peers at her, sensing a shift in conversation. "There was a murder in Crime Alley a few days ago." She tugs idly on a loose curl of hair, eyes downcast.

Helena swallows stiffly, willing herself not to choke on her shame.

"Yeah," she manages. "I, uh, I heard about that too."

"I heard it was a girl around our age…" Stephanie worries her lip, glancing over. "If you ever wants a place to stay, you can crash on our floor. My roommate's out a lot, and I'm sure she wouldn't mind anyway."

Helena thinks of what she told the two women back in Midtown—that Gotham is a city of good Samaritans—and feels a genuine smile light her face. _God,_ she loves Gothamites.

"Thank you, Stephanie," she says. Her tone burns with sincerity. "Really that's…that's very generous of you."

The blonde flushes softly, ducking Helena's gaze. "Hey—GU students gotta look out for each other, right?"

They finish their walk in comfortable silence, and Helena follows Stephanie up the floors of Conroy Hall until they reach her room.

Stephanie's dorm is a bit of a mess—she scrambles forward to kick a pile of dirty clothes under the bed as Helena steps in behind her, scanning the place and idly categorizing everything she sees without really realizing it, a kind of offhand observation.

Her standard twin bed is overcrowded with an array of different pillows, and the lavender duvet draped over it sports a somewhat mysterious yellow stain on the corner. Her nightstand is similarly clogged with, well, just _stuff._ A Wonder Woman action figure posed next to her alarm clock caches Helena's eye, as does the stack of romance novels balanced precariously atop one another beside a half-drank Dr. Pepper bottle. Posters plaster the wall, but Helena is more drawn to the whiteboard she's mounted—she wonders if Stephanie knows she's broken dorm policy by hammering those nails in—which is teeming with scribbles of information in various colors that Helena assumes represents some sort of code. Before she can inspect it more closely, she spies a familiar name on a poster—

"Ashes on Sunday," Helena reads aloud, recognizing the same logo and lettering from Other Helena's own room.

"Yeah!" Stephanie brightens at her observation, whirling around excitedly, holding a stack of loose-leaf paper filled with her messy handwriting, all fairly crumpled. "Oh my god, do you like them too?"

Helena hesitates for a split-second. Her instinct is to say _yes, of course I do_ because revealing a lack of information—no matter how small—goes against everything she was taught. She's rubbed shoulders with some of the smartest, most ingenuous individuals in the world, and never once has she asked for something to be explained, or elaborated, or repeated, instead always taking it upon herself to research and study until she understood. Or, if it was a topic completely out of her reach, just lie and play along.

 _"If you don't know,"_ Mother told her once, arching a brow as she finished a flawlessly fluid conversation about reworking Gotham's power grid with the chief engineer on the project, something Helena doubted she knew _anything_ about, _"lie until you_ ** _do_** _know."_

Helena had frowned. _"And what if you_ ** _never_** _know?"_ she'd asked.

Selina smirked, reaching over to neatly tuck a loose curl back into her daughter's updo.

_"Then keep lying, sweetheart."_

Of course, Helena understands that this practice is only meant for those kept at arm's length from the family—if Lucius Fox was paid a dollar for every question Helena drilled him with whenever he was showing her a new piece of equipment, Wayne Enterprises would go bankrupt. It's the principle of the thing—maintaining that sterling Wayne family reputation to strangers. Waynes were supposed to know _everything._

 _Wayne pride,_ Mother rebukes in her subconscious.

But…she isn't a Wayne anymore. Not right now, anyway. And she needs to fit in and be liked more than she needs anyone to be impressed by her.

She swallows. This shouldn't be so difficult, and yet her tongue almost curls against her when she speaks. Helena doesn't know if she's rusty with normal civilian interaction so much as she was never great at it in the first place. Mother had charisma in spades—Father and Helena could never match her natural knack for conversation.

"I don't actually know who they are," Helena confesses, shrugging a shoulder. "I just recognized the name."

She tenses, slightly, waiting for Stephanie to pull an expression of disbelief or shock or—worst of all—suspicion, but she just laughs.

"It's cool! They aren't like, world famous. They're a local band!" She turns away again to rummage around at her dresser before pulling something out with a flourish, presenting it to Helena.

It's…a CD case.

Helena arches a brow. "You use physical CDs?" she asks, examining the cover. Had she really gone back in time, on top of everything else? It's not like compact discs were ancient history, but…

Stephanie just shrugs good-naturedly. "They're really big on album art, and they put bonus tracks on their CDs to encourage people to buy 'em."

The album art is, in fairness, definitely eye-catching. A splatter of sunset colors—reds, oranges, yellows—offset by silhouette of what Helena assumes are the band members that contrasts with cooler colors. The Gotham skyline stands out starkly in the background, and it draws a smile from the Wayne heiress.

"Local band, you said?" she verifies, flipping the case over to inspect the track list. Stephanie nods excitedly.

"Dinah Lance—she's the lead signer—started the band when she was a freshman at Gotham University!" Stephanie begins. She points her out on the poster, and Helena quirks an eyebrow at the bombshell blonde gripping a microphone in a white-knuckle grip and sporting a smirk that might even impress Mother.

"She seems…intense," Helena offers honestly, drinking in the young woman's appearance. Her eyeliner is coal-dark and her use of fishnet is… _generous_ to say the least, but she looks, well, _cool._ Cooler than Helena's ever looked, at any rate. A few years older, she assumes, maybe just out of college? Helena doesn't recall any kind of student band like that during her own stint at GU, but then, she's sort of getting used to that phenomenon.

Stephanie keeps rattling off more facts that Helena doesn't really hear, but stores away to reflect on later—apparently property damage is one of the band's calling cards, which piques her interest. More importantly though, Helena Bertinelli was a fan of this band—enough to own a poster and a sweatshirt and probably more pieces of paraphernalia Helena hadn't seen that night—so it's another piece of her cover.

She casts her gaze around and finds Stephanie's desk crammed in the corner, predictably messy like everything else, with a few textbooks, including one with a familiar face on the cover…

Helena's heart gets caught in her throat as she steps closer, eyes going wide. _What the fuck what the fuck what the_ ** _fuck—_**

Stephanie leans over to see what's caught her eye and scoffs.

"Yeah, good ole Bruce Wayne, huh?" Stephanie remarks. "I mean, he was born rich, right? What does he know about financial planning? He's probably never worked a day in his life."

"R-right," Helena manages, wetting her lips nervously as she picks up the book. _Think and Grow Rich_ is the title, which absolutely baffles Helena because it's easily the stupidest thing she's ever read. _Think rich?_ What the _fuck?_

But there's no denying that is, in fact, her father posing for a portrait on the book's front cover.

"Why do you _have_ this?" Helena asks, probably sharper than she'd intended, flipping the book over in her hands to critically scan the back cover. The blurb there promises an introduction by Oliver Queen, and Helena rolls her eyes.

Stephanie laughs, apparently delighted at Helena's newfound irritation.

"It's a required text," she informs the other girl cheerfully. "You should have a copy too. Everyone's gotta take a business class, my dude."

 _Required text._ Helena Martha Wayne is going to have to walk her happy ass into a bookshop and buy an ungodly expensive biography of her own fucking father. For a class she is not supposed to be in. For a major she is not working towards. At a school she is not enrolled in. In a city that isn't even _hers._

_Wonderful._

Annoyed, Helena sets the book down while Stephanie drops onto her bed, battered laptop in hand. Helena's eyes rove over the stickers decorating the front of it—an Ashes on Sunday one, predictably, but also the logo of what she recalls to be a local breakfast joint, and a few memes like the _You Tried_ star and the words _Does It Spark Joy?_ in elegant script with a small portrait of Marie Kondo, which Helena can safely say tracks with the image she's shaping of Miss Stephanie Brown.

"Have a seat," Stephanie says, waving casually to her roommate's bed, which—while not pristine—is a far cry from Stephanie's side of the room. Helena settles herself gingerly on the edge of the bed, casting her gaze around for more details—a few succulents in the windowsill, a framed photo of Stephanie and a woman Helena can only assume is her mother, and— _wait._ Helena blinks, frowning hard. If she squints, she can just make out what looks like a GCPD wanted posted peeking out from the edge of her closet—

"Okay! So, what'd you want printed?" Stephanie asks, looking up cheerfully as Helena snaps her gaze back.

"Oh, uh, my schedule, please," Helena answers quickly, relieved she'd reset Other Helena's account information so she doesn't hesitate when Stephanie passes her the laptop to sign on to her GU account.

"I have my schedule in like, five different places and I still forget where I'm going," Stephanie says. She laughs—the sound clearly forced—and Helena glances up to see her frowning out the window. "I like school, but I don't know how _good_ I am at it."

Helena tilts her head, considering the other girl as the printer in the corner rouses itself.

"All freshmen get lost," she says honestly, offering a small shrug. "And besides—people are smart in different ways. You're friendly, and generous. That can't be taught."

Stephanie turns back, looking genuinely pleased. "Yeah," she replies, closing her laptop. "I guess you're right."

A brief bout of silence passes—Helena dearly hopes she isn't supposed to do more than that, she's never been good at comforting people—when Stephanie flashes a big grin.

"Sorry! Didn't mean to be such a bummer there. Just stressed!" She laughs again, and while it's just as forced as the last one, at least she seems genuinely lighter than she had. Helena smiles softly before standing to retrieve her schedule from the printer.

She senses Stephanie move to peer over her shoulder, and has to forcibly stop herself from reacting to having a stranger enter her personal space like that. _God_ she's gonna deck a civilian before this is all said and done. Her self-defense instincts are too strong for this shit.

"Hey! We've got a class together!" Stephanie says brightly, reaching to point at the ten o'clock block every Tuesday and Thursday, which is marked _BUS_AD 1500: Foundations of Business and Professional Development Principles._

Oh god. A business class.

"That's the one I use Bruce Wayne's book for!" Stephanie explains, and Helena holds in a sigh. Of _course_ it is.

"Neat," she says instead, tone painfully neutral.

Stephanie laughs at her poor humor, pulling away to pick the book back off her desk and hand it to her.

"Here, you should catch up on reading if you don't have the book. We're only a week in, so you haven't missed much." She pauses then, cocking her head to the side. "What have you been doing in class, if you haven't had this book?"

"Oh, just taking notes," Helena deflects, working to make her voice sound casual. Other Helena has a scholarship, so she puts her faith in that—she's clearly a good student, and in all honesty, probably has Bruce Wayne's biography buried somewhere at her desk with all her other supplies. Helena's going to have to raid her apartment for all her notes, which is a thought that fills her with dread, but at least she doesn't have to _completely_ lie. "That's the one textbook I never picked up. The bookstore was out of stock when I went to buy it with my others."

Stephanie nods, expression smoothing back out as she smiles. "Oh! Great! Well, if you ever need help, let me know! _Oh!"_

She turns away again, and Helena watches as she digs into the pockets of the raincoat she'd just been wearing to produce a cellphone. "Can we swap numbers? Since we're in the same class and all, I figured maybe we could study sometime!"

Helena barely resists a wince.

"Oh, I—I'd love to, really," Helena says. And she means it. She doesn't like making snap decisions, but if this were her own Gotham and she had nothing to hide, she'd have no problem befriending Stephanie.

But, this _isn't_ her own Gotham, and she's got a whole fucking laundry list of shit to hide.

"I'm getting my phone fixed right now," she invents quickly, splaying her hands as if to say _see? No phone!_ "I think I'm going to end up getting a new number, since I'm switching over to a new carrier and stuff. I dropped it off the Midtown Pier."

Stephanie's face falls _just_ enough to kick Helena's Wayne guilt into overdrive, and she hastily pulls a pen out, offering it to the other girl. "But! You could give me your number, and when I get my new number, I'll text you!" She smiles encouragingly when Stephanie takes the pen. "Plus, we'll see each other every Tuesday and Thursday, right?"

"Definitely," Stephanie agrees, scribbling her number on a post-it and handing it back, along with her copy of _Think and Grow Rich._ "Go ahead and borrow this," she says. "You can give it back to me on Tuesday, okay?"

Helena forces a grin that sports a bit too many teeth.

 _"Thank you,"_ she tells the other girl tightly.

Stephanie beams.

Helena spends the rest of the day on Gotham University's campus after excusing herself from Stephanie's dorm. She walks along the sidewalks, revisits some of her favorite places, sneaks a look at the stadium, and browses through the bookstore a bit. She leafs through some of  _Think and Grow Rich,_ but very quickly has to put it down. It's so stereotypically _bad—_ full of phrases like,  _know what you own and why you own it_ and _most people don't plan to fail, they fail to plan._ For the first time, she considers seeking out this Gotham's Bruce Wayne, because _boy_ does she have some questions. And comments. And very unconstructive criticism.

She laments the lack of lectures on the weekend, wishing she could kill a few hours sitting in on some, but instead spends that time going to the Student Union, buying an overpriced ham sandwich, and settling in to people watch.

Helena doesn't exactly know what—if anything—she's expecting. She only kept a small number of close friends back in her Gotham, and was never terribly social. She can play the part when called upon, but when left to her own devices, Helena prefers to stay in the background. She hardly knew a _sixteenth_ of the students at her own Gotham U—she doesn't suspect she'll see any familiar faces in this crowd.

And for the most part—she's right. She idly inspects those who cross through the Union—new fraternity pledges late for their meetings sprint past in their ill-fitting suits, students in study groups gather together, a girl at a table across the room breaks down crying, and Helena watches as her friend lays a hand on her arm. Beside them, a boy with earbuds is passed out on top of his open textbook. Helena notices he's wearing an Ashes on Sunday snapback. _Hm._ Stephanie had said they aren't world famous, but it seems they're definitely local heroes.

It's oddly soothing to be back here—similar to the feeling from earlier, when she'd walked through Gotham. The normalcy of it is...wonderful. Darkseid's arrival had forced Helena to drop out, and not much later, he'd destroyed most of the buildings on GU's campus. She watches as people cycle in and out of the building, absorbing the life unfolding around her. Being back here is like reliving that peace, and Helena _basks_ in it.

Then, of course, it's all ruined.

She spies a large group of people entering from the eastern doors, but doesn't pay them much mind as she's far more interested in listening to the group of boys one table over from hers discuss her old buddy Red Hood and something called _Nightwing._

"Nightwing could kick Red Hood's _ass,_ Jeff," one boy scoffs, rolling his eyes at Jeff's apparent incompetence.

"Hood has _guns,_ Logan," Jeff replies shortly, frowning hard. "Fucking _guns,_ dude. Explain to me a world where Nightwing's dumb _poles—"_

 _"Escrima sticks,"_ Logan cuts in.

"—could beat _guns."_

More boys chime in to voice their opinion, and Helena strains to listen, but the large group she'd watched enter is passing by her table now—louder than they have any business being—and Helena glances over to frown at them, assessing their older age and sharper dress and assuming they must be a group of professors before her gaze crosses a pair of vivid green eyes and—

Helena scrambles to bury her face in Bruce Wayne's autobiography, eyes wide, heart pounding, _oh god oh god oh god—_

She waits for the doors to the Union to close before popping her head up and whipping around to watch them from the window—a familiar head of red hair shining in the cloudy Gotham sun.

Helena nearly chokes a hard swallow.

Barbara _fuckin'_ Gordon. The Commissioner's daughter. Dick Grayson's _wife._

Of course, it makes _sense_ she'd exist here—although frankly Helena is getting _a little_ pissed that she truly seems to be the only person from _her_ Gotham missing from _this_ Gotham—but the sight of her is still an absolute shock. She was never terribly close with Barbara—she was always busy with police work, and Helena spent more time with Dick—and their age gap prompted them to run in different social circles. She likes her well enough, but Barbara is a wild card now.

What does she do in this Gotham? Is she still with Dick? Does she dislike vigilante work as much Helena's Barbara did?

Helena grits her teeth, watching her vanish into another building before rising roughly to her feet. She likes to think she's capable of outmaneuvering most anyone, but _no one—_ Not Father, not Mother, not the Commissioner, not Dick—could pull a fast one on Barbara Gordon.

If she's a player in this game, Helena's odds of winning just took a very significant tumble.

She throws her trash away and tucks _Think and Grow Rich_ under her arm as she races for the door, forced to stop short when it swings open suddenly, revealing another familiar face.

"Oh, hey!" It's Stephanie, because of course it is, blinking in surprise before smiling and turning to the girl beside her. "See, Tamara? This is the girl I was telling you about! Helena Bertinelli!"

Tamara—Helena's brain is spinning too wildly to decide why exactly that name sounds so familiar—nods politely, but Helena is already trying to move past them.

"Sorry—don't mean to be rude—I lost track of time and I'm running late." She flashes an apologetic smile that she hopes doesn't look as panicked as she feels. "I'll see you Tuesday!"

"Whoa, whoa, wait a second!" Stephanie catches her arm, and only the fact that Helena's free hand is occupied with her father's biography keeps her from responding with the appropriate move that would break Stephanie's fucking arm.

Holy _shit,_ these civilians.

"It's pretty late," Stephanie says, brow furrowed. "Seriously. You don't want to wander around Gotham this late at night."

Helena glances around, realizing dusk had started to creep in while she'd sat in the Student Union. She really _had_ lost track of time.

"Do you have anyone to walk home with?" The other girl, Tamara, steps forward, tilting her head questioningly. "I really don't feel comfortable letting you go alone."

Her dark gaze—piercing and familiar—nags at Helena. She knows this girl somehow too, but her brain has essentially short-circuited for the time being, so she just stares back blankly.

"I'm _okay._ Really." She tugs her hand out of Stephanie's grasp, careful not to pull too hard, and gestures vaguely in the direction of Uptown. "I've made the trip plenty of times. Don't worry about me."

In fairness, Helena doesn't really blame them—if the roles were reversed, she would _absolutely_ not let Stephanie go out on her own. Gotham at night is fundamentally dangerous. But, she's Helena Martha Wayne—an expertly trained vigilante—so the rules are just a bit different.

She doesn't even wait for a response—so paranoid that Barbara Gordon is going to round the corner and spill all her secrets—and instead offers one last smile before taking off.

Helena only slows down when she reaches the quad, realizing—belatedly—that sprinting hell-for-leather across campus is probably drawing more attention than walking normally would, and forces herself to steady her gait. Her mind keeps buzzing though.

She tries to organize her thoughts, establish all the known duplicates across both Gothams.

Bruce Wayne? Definitely.

Dick Grayson? A bit younger, but present.

Oliver Queen? He wrote the forward to _Think and Grow Rich,_ so that would be a yes.

Dr. Thompkins? Probably tacking up wanted posters of Huntress all around the East End right about now.

Diana Prince? Stephanie had a Wonder Woman figurine perched on her nightstand, so she exists in some capacity or another.

Felicity Smoak? Apparently an ex-girlfriend of her dad, which she's trying very hard not to think about, thanks.

Barbara Gordon? A horrifying, resounding _yes._

That still leaves a lot of holes—where's Mother? Who were all those Robins? All those Gotham Princes? Who is Nightwing and Red Robin and Spoiler?

Helena grimaces as she walks on. She thought she held all the cards here, but things are very quickly spiraling out of her control. She has got to come up with a plan, _now._

Something pricks at the back of her neck—she doesn't need Huntress' mask to have her instincts. Helena stills just for a moment. There's definitely a set of eyes on her. She glances around—she's made it farther than she'd realized, breezing through most of Midtown lost in thought. It's only gotten darker, and Helena watches her shadow appear as she passes under a streetlamp, and sees another a few feet back, before it vanishes.

As much as she wants to act, a civilian wouldn't notice what a full-time vigilante notices, so Helena plays it off, continuing on like nothing had happened, forcing her stride to stay measured and casual, even while she strains to catch any sound of pursuit.

 _"I will find you again,"_ Robin had threatened. But…he has no way of knowing _she's_ the one who was under the mask that night. It's a big city—home to more than a few girls who look like her. Robin couldn't pick her out of a lineup—in this, Helena is supremely confident.

Red Hood then? He'd met her as a regular civilian, and while she supposes he and Robin could have compared notes and potentially put two-and-two together, that's still quite a leap to make—particularly when neither seemed keen on being team players. Besides, Hood hadn't struck her as the type to favor stealth. Something about that big red fuck-off helmet of his.

Nightwing? Helena doesn't know who—or what—that is. Another Bat of some kind? Helena can't imagine they'd have many more—aren't they crowded enough with twelve different Robins and all of Hood's guns?

 _Batman…?_ Helena pulls a mental E brake, refusing to go down that road. Batman has better things to do than skulk after random girls. At least she fucking hopes he does—after her research today, she has no godly idea how this Gotham's Batman spends his time.

So she keeps moving, crossing into Uptown and pulling up the hood of her jacket as a light rain begins to fall. Sure, she and Father would occasionally patrol around town, and Mother often prowled the streets of the East End District looking for trouble, but unless a civilian was very clearly in distress, they didn't just _follow_ people.

Her pursuer isn't flawless—Helena can occasionally hear a stutter step as they land unevenly after a jump between rooftops, and at one point, she thinks they honestly lose track of her when she takes a shortcut—but they're definitely persistent.

A few more streets—she's only a block or two from Royal Ridge now—and Helena finally has had enough. She freezes on the sidewalk, turning around to scan the rooftops, eyes narrowed.

"Hello?" Helena calls, fingers tensing around the book in her hands. She's not above hauling off and smacking someone with Bruce Wayne's autobiography—fucking watch her.

A sudden rattling catches Helena's attention, and she swings her gaze up to track the source, eyes narrowing in on a loose piece of piping that rattles as a figure in eggplant purple sprints by before ducking out of sight.

 _Purple…?_ Helena's frown grows darker as the swish of the stranger's familiarly colored cape plays over in her mind's eye. Huntress is far too unknown for any kind of copycat, but…it's somewhat unsettling all the same. Purple isn't really a color typically favored by vigilantes. _Black_ and _very very dark gray_ have sort of cornered that particularly market.

No mistakes.

Helena turns away, continuing on. There's nothing she can do about it—she's building a civilian identity, and civilians _absolutely do not_ go chasing after random, costumed strangers in the dead of night, so she's just going to have to march her happy ass onward and do her best to put it out of her mind.

Right. Because Waynes are _so_ good at that.

She makes it down one more side street, mind turning anxiously. Leading someone straight to the residence of a girl who she is now _posing_ as is quite possibly the only mistake she could make that would be _worse_ than the mistakes she made _previously_ that got her in this mess in the first place. Tying her to Other Helena's place will also tie her to Huntress, which will eventually tie her to Helena Wayne. She might as well just turn around and yell out _"By the way, I know that Bruce Wayne is Batman and also I'm his daughter!"_

Overwhelmed with paranoia, Helena hangs a sharp right, abandoning her route towards Other Helena's apartment and mapping out a new destination. She can't have anyone associating her with Other Helena's place—it's too early, the crime too fresh, her own identity too new. She works her jaw, shouldering her bag as she strides on towards the Cauldron—an unusually upscale residential area of Uptown that brushes up against the Bowery and is home to Gotham's most notorious, well-known hitmen.

Let's see how far her shadow is willing to follow.

_No mistakes._

Well...one more wouldn't hurt, right?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HI HELLO THE WONDERFUL [@ArtLindigo](https://twitter.com/ArtLindigo) WHO HAS DRAWN ART OF MY FICS BEFORE HAS DONE IT AGAIN [WITH THIS EXCELLENT DEPICTION OF THE HELENA MEETING HOOD SCENE](https://twitter.com/lindigo4/status/1063769973145796608) I HAVE NOT STOPPED STARING AT IT SINCE I SAW IT IT’S MY DESKTOP WALLPAPER I’M GOING TO PRINT IT AND FRAME IT I LOVE IT SO MUCH THANK YOU THANK YOU IT’S BEAUTIFUL AND YOU’RE BEAUTIFUL GO SHOW HER SOME LOVE PLEASEEEEEEEE
> 
> anyway please allow me to introduce my favorite fictional character: STEPHANIE FUCKING BROWN I love her she’s wonderful I know I didn’t do her justice but dammit I tried. at first, I was going to use the Steph that appears in Bryan Q. Miller’s _Batgirl Rising_ run where she’s, yknow, actually Batgirl and learning the ropes and has Barbara Gordon to guide her and is becoming more mature every day but then decided: fuck it. I want the clueless but determined Steph from her Spoiler days, so that’s who y’all got ~~although Batgirl Rising is one of my all-time favorite comic runs and Steph’s voice there is where I pulled a lot of inspiration for Helena so I truly can’t recommend it enough! also Steph punches Bruce Wayne in the fucking face like what more do you want~~ plus, this way, Helena can make a friend who _isn’t_ in the batfamily.
> 
> And also Felicity Smoak, which I hope doesn’t turn people off. She isn’t a major player (nobody but the Bats are) but I have other plans for Black Canary that _don’t_ involve ending up with Green Arrow, and plus…I really like Felicity. Emily Bett Rickards needs a damn chiropractor for carrying that show all those years, and like, while I _super_ don’t agree with the direction Arrow ultimately went, I like fun, lighthearted, awkward characters (re: Stephanie Brown) and the early dynamic of Oliver, Dig, and Felicity is something I’m very fond of, so I really wanted to include Ms. Smoak. also every single DC character is a deadpan snarker, and having too many of them at once really takes away the punch and the humor of deadpan snarking, so I wanted to introduce a character who just doesn't do that. anyway.
> 
> I got a new job that is significantly fancier than my last, so as always **I cannot guarantee when this story will be updated but unless I specifically say otherwise, it is always in-progress.** I’ve thought too long and hard about this shit to just drop it. 
> 
> if you want fic updates and behind the scenes: [there's a twitter for that](https://twitter.com/reduxwriter)
> 
> if you want chatter about my personal life/what I’m into/my dumb hot takes: [there's a twitter for that](https://twitter.com/reduxroyal)
> 
> some people have mentioned interest in the quotes I use: [there's a twitter for that](https://twitter.com/aquotebot)
> 
> have a good day kids <3 always feel free to drop me a line if you wanna chat, or leave a question in the comments. a lot of people ask about which parts of the DC continuity I'm pulling certain plot points from, and that's really fun for me to discuss, so if you're ever curious, just ask!
> 
> I know this chapter was a bit boring, but hey! can't have someone get murdered _every_ chapter. next time: Helena faces off with East End's organized crime, overhears some stuff she shouldn't, and we get a POV switch!


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